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The Coat of Harms [Equipment Primer]

Commander / EDH Aggro Equip Knights Multiplayer RBW (Mardu)

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Lands (37)

Card Draw (15)

"Enablers" (10)

Equipment (21)

Legendaries (16)

Interaction (12)

Board Wipes (2)

Commander (1)

Commander: foil Syr Gwyn, Hero of Ashvale

Knights (20)

Mana (14)

Tutor (7)

Sideboard

Other (5)

Go Big Then Go Home

I molded this equipment deck out of Gwyn's Brawl Precon after a long 8 month period of refinement. The aim is to stack up several pieces of equipment on 1-2 knights that bear it well to attack for massive damage. I didn’t fully commit to Voltron, as I dislike that playstyle in casual pods. Although, as I tested running a higher number of Knights, the need for a few tutors became apparent to consistently acquire equipment, despite their lower density. Because of their inclusion, this deck pushes into a slightly higher power-level, though it still reamins casual enough that I get slapped around by my share of opponents playing precons.

Over those 8 months, I made nearly weekly iterations, until I settled on something solid and made it public here under "Knights of the Pound Table" in July 2023. It's been renamed to "The Coat of Harms," due to somebody's list already having the old name. I’ve done my best to write a primer below, displaying some of the information I picked up over those months and after relating to card choices and how I use them in-game.

Syr Gwyn has been one of my two favorite Commander decks of all time. I'm eager to put ideas out there and receive any feedback. Thanks for stopping by to read, and happy brewing!

As I said, this deck seeks to stack a large number of equipment on a creature or two and make some massive attacks. Commander damage knockouts remain both viable and very common if you choose to go for them, but by not committing to voltron, we get to use other knights and gain some resiliency by doing so. Parsing Gwyn’s functions down to an enabler (cheating equip costs) and a card draw engine forces the table to sometimes choose between removing my threats and disrupting my ability to make them. Even if Gwyn leaves, the knight next to her might still carry a stack of gear, ready to threaten 80% of an opponent's life total. Although, if my opponents choose instead to remove the threat, the next knight in hand gets slammed down to pick up the equipment.

The deck patiently builds up a board until turns 5-7. Any attacks you make in the early game are mostly done to trigger any utility you drew, such as Diamond Pick-Axe. By turn 5 or 6, you usually have a combination of: 1-2 Knights, 1-2 equipment, and maybe a mana rock. From there, you can either cast Gwyn to suit up your other knights and start drawing cards, or you can manually equip your gear and use your leftover mana to develop your board for another turn. Once you've starting suiting up, the deck ramps up significantly in damage, so get ready to take some heat from the table in return. Over those couple turns, you might even be looking to take someone out, but that depends on how explosively the combination of equipment you drew/tutored for performs.

You may find yourself tempted to only use Gwyn as your equipment bearer, but I intentionally avoid this play pattern depending on what I think my opponents will do. Opponents see equipment on the battlefield and can calculate how much damage you threaten, and at minimum, they know Gwyn could be the creature attacking them. Unless you hid a finisher card in your hand, they’ll prepare Removal or Fog-like effects to stop those risky commander damage knockouts. This is also why you might develop your board for an extra turn instead of playing Gwyn the moment you hit 6 mana; tapping out to cast her, only for her to get removed in response to your first equip, sets your momemtum back severely. Sometimes, have some patience and wait a turn for a better opportunity, especially if you have other cards in your hand to put down. In this way, Voltron only comes online in this deck if you have a Conqueror's Flail attached to a creature before casting Gwyn. Keeping your equipment off of Gwyn makes your opponents choose what they fear more: Gwyn or another equipped knight. So, even though you can move equipment freely after combat (especially onto Gwyn), you can play around removal by leaving it on your tapped attacker. Although, if you see that an opponent has a lot of mana in colors like Red or they just generally have lots of cards on the battlefield, moving around equipment after combat gives you better blockers. Most of the time, play around removal your opponents having removal ready, but sometimes you'll need to prepare for an opponent having an explosive turn and trying to attack you.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Once the deck sets up, massive bursts of power are its clearest strength. If you learn to hide some of your finishers in your hand, you even gain an element of surprise to your biggest turns without pre-emptive, high caution from your opponents. Despite playing like an aggro deck, this particular variation of a Gwyn deck has some resiliency and potential to grind out longer games. Gwyn draws cards to keep your hand full, providing more gas in the tank to keep the pressure up, and Lifelink sources offset life paid and damage taken. Further, tutors allow you to grab these pieces of the toolbox whenever you think the game needs it.

However, by its choice in Commander and strategy, the deck acquires a couple inherent flaws. Gwyn's high mana cost of 6 sometimes takes time and luck to reach, in contrast to the deck's mostly low mana curve, and as an equipment deck, you also have to find both a creature and an equipment before your strategy comes online. The commander can't be around in the early game to help you draw into lands and knights, so I've tuned the deck to have better digging and mana acquisition when she isn't around to do it. For this purpose, any utility equipment, as well as unassuming cards like Ambitious Farmhand   and Acclaimed Contender, really pull their weight to make the deck function. The equipment tutors help with consistency too, since you can burn them early to grab those utility equipment, but remember that doing so reveals to your opponents that you needed that piece. Cutthroat players or people who are liberal with their interaction might target whatever you find to shut you down.

Since we try to tune the deck around those flaws, the strategy's real weaknesses tend to be defense against larger armies of creatures and (in my design) a slight lack of ramp. Let's talk about that first weakness. Like many aggro decks, its skill-testing moments come in prudently evaluating how to split your equipment and how many creatures to hold back. Vigilance appears rarely outside of Gwyn, since the many knights who have Vigilance were excluded from the list for lacking other usefulness. (I discuss creature criteria in the "Knights" section of “Roles to Play,” if you're curious.) With an average of only 2-3 knights on board at a time, including the Commander, Gwyn might be the sole creature left untapped to block unless you show restraint. These decisions hinge on how you think your opponents will respond to you. As I stated, moving equipment around to your blockers protects against an opponent having an explosive turn and attacking you, while keeping equipment stacked on your tapped attacker means people can’t remove Gwyn AND your current bearer with just single target removal. If your opponents have a large board or might have an explosive turn, greedily attacking for Gwyn triggers and leaving only her to defend still gives your opponents the opportunity to spend removal on Gwyn and swing in for massive damage while you’re open. Though even if a Sword of Vengeance keeps your greatest knight untapped, a small force of 1-2 blockers can’t intercept an entire army of tokens. Unless you have a board wipe in hand, rely on Lifelink to keep yourself alive as you race opponents that go wide.

Let's discuss that other weakness. I have a lot of cards in the "Mana" category to help reach Gwyn's mana cost of 6, but only 6 of those are specifically mana rocks. Several others have conditions, and a few only make one-use treaures, but the deck usually has sufficient mana, barring bad luck and not drawing lands for 6 turns. So to elaborate, a "lack of ramp" just means that we don't have a ton of cards that exclusively accelerate our mana (with no downside or conditions), since a lot of the deck's slots get dedicated to balancing the number of knights against the number of available equipment. Most other cards need to perform more than one role so that we can compact deck slots. In this case, the list does not consistently spend its early turns playing land ramp and mana rocks staples, and even if some of those are in hand, it might be better sequencing to cast our equipment and knights on curve. This creates a 5-6 turn setup period, where we usually need to play a knight and 1-2 equipment (though not necessarily Gwyn) before our deck comes online and we shift focus to whatever is best for that particular game. This makes the deck more fair to casual tables, but it's also an obvious weakness when high-power decks start to outspeed you.

As a final note, opponents can most effectively shut down the strategy by destroying equipment. The loss of Gwyn can set you back harshly on mana, but if a stack of equipment stuck to another knight before she left, you’re at least granted a window to keep up the aggression before you either replay Gwyn or lose the creature. Inclusions like Sevinne's Reclamation exist as contingencies to artifact destruction and give you at least one way to stay in the game, if you have some luck in digging for it.

How powerful is the deck?

I find myself tempted to call this a "semi-casual" deck. The truly high-power strategies (stuff like Treasure decks; NOT cEDH stuff) have an advantage in power, but this Gwyn list also seems to be slightly stronger than the average casual deck (like Precons). Unless your have the perfect draws, its pivotal and game-winning moments still occur on turns 7 and later. The strategy requires at least one creature, which can be Commander Gwyn herself, combined with either a specific combination of 2-3 equipment or a larger stack of any equipment. Even after assembling 4+ cards for this win condition, it takes more than one turn of combat to move against the whole table without Hexplate Wallbreaker. Fundamentally, a high mana cost of 6 hinders any deck centered on their commander for synergies and a value engine, and further, equipment decks require both equipment AND creatures that carry them in order to play, which increases the amount of card types you have to juggle in deck construction to make it function. Those disadvantages make this list weaker than actual high-power strategies, but as an aggro deck that significantly ramps up in damage (after setting up), it puts massive pressure on casual decks. Notably, this struggle plagues voltron strategies too. I added more Knights than voltron lists would and started running equipment tutors in a successful(?) attempt to change how it functions—to make it belong more cleanly at both of these power levels. Unfortunately, it pushes slightly towards higher power levels than lower, but it's frankly the best I can do right now.

If you’re still ever concerned about playing with a table, it always helps to give people a pitch about the deck. For me, that ends up sounding like:

“This deck wants to stack equipment to make some really big attacks. I wanna make sure it’s okay that I’m gonna interact, that I’ve got some cards in here that can search for equipment, and that I’ve got some cards in here like Shadowspear and Jitte.”

Sometimes, I even bother to mention that the deck has one “counterspell” in Reprieve, but I'm currently trying to be better about when I choose to play this deck in first place.

I've created short blurbs about all of this deck’s categories. I will not individually discuss every card except the equipment, which received their own section below called, “The Coat of Harms.” Here, I’ll cover the logic behind each category, alongside any other notes that I think would help someone understand the deckbuilding decisions.

Lands

This deck is dominantly White, but I put heavy demands on my manabase by alternating on curve between multicolored spells and double-pipped spells. So, I added the white pairings of dual lands from several cycles while excluding most Rakdos options. I also spent the majority of my allocated slots for tapped lands on Dominaria’s and Kaldheim’s tap-duals with land subtypes. With several tap lands already in and my pip demands pushing out colorless lands, I ended up reducing my utility lands to only what I thought was the most impactful for the deck. But by using a healthy amount of basics and those tap-duals with subtypes, I could add check lands and Castle Locthwain and still count on them to enter untapped just like my crowd lands and pain lands. Past that, the addition of the fetch lands was only because I added in Sevinne's Reclamation.

Beyond getting one mana of each color, notable benchmarks for pips and what you can cast off them include:

Knights

In descending order, knights have to meet one or more of 3 criteria to make the cut in this deck:

  1. Bear equipment well through keywords. This can be Double Strike, Trample, and especially evasion keywords like Flying and Menace.
  2. Offer some kind of utility to justify their inclusion. This is going to be all the Knights in this list that also function as removal, card draw, or ramp.
  3. Perform some kind of immediate function with haste or an ETB trigger, because an aggro deck still values speed. I would not add a knight from this category alone, but it boosts an option that’s weaker in the other areas. Examples include Inti, Seneschal of the Sun, who provides immediate card selection through his “when you attack” trigger, and the few Haste creatures like Sunrise Cavalier.

Legendaries

This list does not contain any “legends matter” cards, as those would push the deck’s strategy away from equipment. This category exists so that you can look up your targets for Search for Glory and Thalia's Lancers before casting them.

Mana

My need to include lots of knights AND equipment takes up a lot of slots, so I have little spare space to be stingy about only using mana rocks and land ramp. Rather than fill this category with only ramp, I included a number of things that give me mana in any way, especially if the card itself remains “on-theme” to the strategy of knights and equipment. Ambitious Farmhand   puts a land drop into my hand and easily flips into a knight once Gwyn hits the field, or Diamond Pick-Axe is an equipment that makes Treasures.

Card Draw

All of these are cards that help me dig in some way, especially for equipment, while Gwyn is unavailable in the Command Zone. The two lands are obviously not card advantage engines driven by synergy, but they are still very useful for those bad luck games when you need just one piece of equipment, one land, or one equipment bearer for your hand to come together. As many inclusions as possible are trying to stay “on-theme” as knights or equipment, with the notable exception of Kayla's Reconstruction for its density of possible hits in my deck’s curve and its ability to put those cards straight into play. (Kayla’s Reconstruction can currently hit 34 cards—11 Knights and 23 Artifacts—but as I mention in the tips at the end, I would not recommend an X value higher than 2.)

Tutors

These all exist to fetch equipment; using them for other targets is an emergency circumstance (and is only really possible with the legendary tutors). I used to fear that tutors would remove the deck’s fun for both myself and others at a casual table, but I have been proven mostly wrong for this deck. Beyond the simple idea that high power cards can be fun, tutors provide their own kind of variance in "Toolbox" decks, where the deck contains a suite of cards each designed for specific scenarios. It's skill-testing and engaging to analyze which of my (currently) 20-21 equipment best handle the situation or combo with what I already have, and my answer for what to find often changes over every single turn the game. This list average to 2-3 equipment that share functions (e.g. Trample, card draw, lifegain, combat stat boosts, etc.), but a lot of them still offer unique traits instead of being completely interchangeable. Consider what you REALLY need for your current state, though if you’re ever feeling lost about how to tutor, the “Coat of Harms” section should help with analyzing what the equipment are used for and when you might need them. Sometimes, you may need to burn one in the early game for a utility equipment to smooth over mana and card draw issues—as these tutors exist to make the deck more consistently contribute to a game—but where you can afford it, I recommend holding onto them until the most pivotal turns of the game.

Interaction

This category includes cards like Reprieve, but most of the category is removal that targets nonland permanents at instant speed. A card like Bedevil got cut because of my personal struggles with enchantments, and a card like Vindicate never made it in because I finally came to value holding up mana for instant speed interaction. If you’re smart enough to recognize when an opponent has a lot of mana and/or presence on board and thus might play something game ending on their turn, holding up mana for even just Reprieve or Unexpectedly Absent can buy you the one turn you need to launch a massive attack. Those cards even benefit you while leading by halting an opponent’s comeback bomb or their Commander, giving you more time to stay ahead. But, conserve your interaction, as they are often your only ticket to stop someone from winning and/or to secure your own victory. Tutors and Interaction are game-winning when saved for later and then used at the right time.

“Enablers”

The only category tentatively named. It refers to inclusions that cover deck weaknesses. Balan, Wandering Knight and Fighter Class provide alternative ways to cheat equip costs if Gwyn returns to the Command Zone so that I can maintain pressure on my opponents. Other cards protect can some of our board from being permanently removed, such as Werefox Bodyguard or Unexpectedly Absent cast on X=0. Similarly, manually equipping Conqueror's Flail to a creature before Gwyn hits the board is one of the only ways to protect her from instant speed interaction while she equips the whole team. However, I still consider the few cards that offer recursion to be the true “enablers” of the deck, as destroying equipment is the most significant counterplay to this strategy.

Board Wipes

I run a lower amount of board wipes these days, and despite their high mana costs, I chose these two specifically because they can remove enemy enchantments, which have historically given me a lot of headache. Ruinous Ultimatum can obviously function as a finishing card too since it's completely asymmetrical, but Austere Command is much easier to cast and still provides a lot of flexibility in how your own board is affected.

Let's discuss the key cards of the deck: the equipment themselves. Each performs a general role in the deck but often has unique qualities that give them a specific purpose compared to other equipment in this list. In that way, the equipment are like a "toolbox" of varying effects, and you'll have to rely on tutors to get the particular tool you need for each game and to create pairings that maximize your current board state. Hopefully, highlighting each's qualities below will help you understand why I would tutor for one or the other.

Although, in an attempt to minimize inconsistency, I still need my combat equipment to have impact if individually drawn. Somewhere along the way, I developed loose criteria for equipment:

  1. Provides any amount of a stat boost.
  2. Provides a meaningful combat keyword.
  3. Casts cheaply while equipping for more.

I describe these qualities as “loose,” because I notice that I’ve bent my rules and made exceptions for equipment more frequently than the knights. Even so, they fall into some categories of providing utility, a combat boost, and/or a finisher. Among combat equipment, most provide keywords but some only increase the size of the equipped creature. I could make those separate categories, but the most important “creature size” equipment get used like finishers anyway for being scary, high-damage cards.

  • Diamond Pick-Axe

A utility equipment, intended to generate mana but still providing a stat boost. Compared to similar equipment (e.g. Beamtown Beatstick), Diamond Pick-Axe creates the treasure as an attack trigger, which means even if the creature can’t get through, the needed mana is guaranteed. As a bonus, Indestructible will keep the pickaxe around after most board wipes, retaining an equipment for triggers and a source of extra mana to help recast your hand. If you need to tutor for mana reasons early on, Indestructible makes it a much safer target than Sword of the Animist, even if consumable treasures are less appealing than extra lands.

  • Colossus Hammer

A finisher equipment that likely needs no introduction. Its cheap casting cost easily allows you to hide it in your hand until you’re ready to cast, equip, and attack in the same turn. It’s an excellent tutor target for exactly that reason, if a boring one. It lacks keywords, but provides massive damage if you already have Trample or Double Strike available. Comboing this with providers of those keywords, such as Embercleave especially, can threaten players with just those two cards.

  • Shadowspear

A combat equipment, famous in many formats. Providing a stat boost, Trample, and Lifelink makes it an excellent equipment for the deck, but the extra ability to remove Hexproof and Indestructible offers a situational utility worth tutoring for. That utility ability, its cheap casting cost, and its Legendary typing (for those relevant tutors) tend to be the main reasons to choose it over others, since Loxodon Warhammer provides the same combat benefits with a larger boost. A very safe choice for a tutor if you don't know what you need yet, but not necessarily the most individually impactful on every game state.

  • Vorpal Sword

An interesting case, but mostly a finisher equipment. It can be a nice addition to a stack of combat equipment through its +2 power (despite its incredibly cheap casting cost) and its ability to combo Deathtouch with Trample. Obviously, it could also knock out an extra player on its own, but unlike other finishers, it tends to struggle with surprise due to the high mana cost of casting and activating it on the same turn. So far in my experience, it needs to sit around for a turn or two before I have a board state to use it, which gives scared players a chance to remove it.

  • Blackblade Reforged

A finisher equipment. Blackblade provides a Legendary imitation of Colossus Hammer, making one of the best choices for legendary tutors. It has theoretically high late game potential and combos with Sword of the Animist, but because it takes time to build up, I find it’s one of two finishers that I can drop on the table without my opponents immediately targeting it. In that way, it could be considered a combat equipment, but its ability to knockout earns it place as a finisher.

  • Conqueror's Flail

Another unique case, given its use in combat, but this one primarily provides utility. With Gwyn present, it provides significant +3 boosts to its bearer, but the flail’s purpose is to block opponents’ interaction during vital turns. Not only does it protect Gwyn from instant speed removal while she equips the team, but it also blocks fogs and last minute removal when making crucial attacks. It's an important piece of the toolkit worth tutoring for.

  • Glimmer Lens

A utility equipment here to draw cards. The deck averages 2-3 creatures on board at a time, so I know from experience that the condition is easy to meet, particularly since “For Mirrodin!” also provides one of the bodies. As a bonus, it triggers on attack instead of upon dealing damage to players. This card carries a special function though; if you have early-game equipment in hand like Diamond Pick-Axe but no creatures to use it, your equipment tutors can fetch Glimmer Lens to be your creature, since it creates a 2/2 Rebel after entering the battlefield.

  • Mask of Memory

Another utility equipment here to draw cards. It offers the most card selection in our deck but often requires a flier to reliably get triggers. A Trample creature probably works situationally, but I haven’t gotten to try that as much in actual games. I also want to experiment with tutoring for card draw equipment in the early game and will update this once I've figured anything out.

  • Poet's Quill

Perhaps the best utility equipment in this deck, with the concession that your table lets you have a sideboard for Lesson cards. It checks all of our criteria, providing a small stat boost AND Lifelink, alongside more versatility than our usual utility equipment through a selection of one of our Lesson cards.

  • Rogue's Gloves

The last of our utility equipment that draws cards. It’s not as powerful as Mask of Memory, but effects that mimic it are still in demand and quite useful paired with the right knights.

  • Sting, the Glinting Dagger

A combat equipment that grants Haste and a stat boost at a great costing cost of 2. Its abilities to untap the bearer for defense and to be found by my legendary tutors grant extra reasons to run it. Its competition can equip for cheaper mana costs, but manually equipping Sting for two mana is still a reasonable cost in any theoretical and dire situations where Gwyn isn’t around and you need a creature in your hand to attack.

  • Sword of the Animist

Obviously, this sword's utility is ramp. Costing two mana to cast, its ability to ramp repeatedly, its stat boost, and its Legendary supertype make it the best available equipment for addressing mana issues. There’s not much nuance I can add to the discussion. It’s an excellent card if drawn in your opening hand, and if you aren’t drawing lands, you can even risk tutoring it in the early game to replace land drops, assuming an opponent doesn’t recognize the card’s usefulness and blow it up.

  • The Irencrag

While this mana rock provides utility in the early game, it turns into a combat equipment once we cast Gwyn and enter "go-mode." The play pattern of ramping into the commander before becoming the equipment we need for Gwyn's card draw triggers fits right into our deck, and I know from running Plate Armor that a +3/+3 bonus is rather effective, even without its own combat keywords.

  • Umezawa's Jitte

A combat equipment. You can use Jitte like utility due to its ability to snipe any small, annoying creatures off of the field. Although, I find it more fun for everyone and arguably more effective to build up counters and use it as a snowballing win-con, where using all of the counters at once can either get you out of a crucial situation or push whatever stack of equipment you’ve assembled into a potential knockout. Make sure to have contingencies in plan when you spend your +2/+2 boosts, since that’s also an opponent’s opportunity to remove the creature and force your Jitte to fall off with no counters left. Rely on Conqueror's Flail, Reprieve, or even just pay attention to who is tapped out if you need to secure those turns. Finally, remember that you get two charge counters on First Strike damage before you proceed to normal damage. You can spend those counters getting tricky or just to get even bigger stats during the normal damage step, and if you have Forge Anew (or less relevantly, Balan, Wandering Knight) with a First Strike creature, you can also move Jitte in between the damage steps to ensure that it gets two triggers per combat. Don't be afraid to use its -1/-1 ability if necessary to stop somebody, but I would encourage hoarding charge counters as possible. It's an equipment that individually performs excellently with basically any of the deck's knights.

  • Heirloom Blade

This equipment is a recent addition in need of some testing. It's basically a combat equipment since it only provides a stat boost, but it compensates for its lack of a keyword by helping fight deck inconsistency. Theoretically, it can smooth out those hands that only have one Knight (or maybe even none) despite having several equipment in play. I'll update this description as I get to play with it and glean some insight into how it performs.

  • Loxodon Warhammer

One of the most individually solid equipment in the deck. Its lack of a toughness boost can make attacks risky, but even if your opponent tries to trade up, the Trample and Lifelink create a large life swing in your favor. Even on its own, it’s a great way to both get your damage higher and start gaining meaningful chunks of life when you haven’t hit a critical mass of equipment yet. I often reach for Loxodon Warhammer first when I tutor for Trample, but don’t forget to evaluate if you should instead grab Shadowspear for its activated ability or Sword of Vengeance for its variety of other benefits.

  • Maul of the Skyclaves

The only equipment in the deck that grants Flying. (Keep that in mind if you need evasion and have a tutor in hand.) A +2/+2 stat boost and First Strike does a lot to protect the equipped creature while attacking, even more so since only other fliers or Reach creatures can block it. In that way, it performs well on both offense and defense, and its ETB trigger lets you use it early. Its only con is the equip cost, leaving you completely reliant on Gwyn to move it around after you cast it, since it is rarely effective to pay 4 mana for a single equip.

  • Sword of Vengeance

The all-in-one equipment of the Coat of Harms. First Strike and its +2 power boost protect the bearer during combat, while Vigilance keeps them available for defense. The Trample and Haste on top of that are just bonuses, but valuable bonuses too. A Gwyn and Sword of Vengeance on the board with 7 Knights in hand is enough to play a game of Commander. (Winning that game, on the other hand, depends on the available knights and your draws from there.)

  • Two-Handed Axe

This might appear on the surface as a “win-more” card, but I find it deceptively versatile. Even with the axe alone, casting the adventure and axe for 5 mana lets Gwyn deal a surprise 20 Commander damage to a player and put them under lethal threat for the rest of the game. Outside of Skyhunter Skirmisher, any of the Trample, Flying, or Double Strike knights can still benefit from having their damage doubled, and the card remains innocuous enough to be cast early and left on the table for some turns before you assemble a game-winning equipment stack. But, that only highlights the axe’s individual performance. Obviously, its potential to knockout a player when combined with the combat equipment give it top-end usefulness too.

  • Hexplate Wallbreaker

One of the two truest finisher cards in the deck. “For Mirrodin!” does not matter. The +2/+2 boost gets your equipment bearer as large as possible for your attacks, but the goal is drop Hexplate Wallbreaker from your hand, equip, and use the extra combat step to either knockout one opponent, or if your bearer is strong enough, knockout two players at once. It’s a unique and powerful ability, since this strategy is usually limited to one knockout at a time.

  • Embercleave

The other strongest finisher in the deck. A +1/+1 bonus comes up short on its own in the grand scale of commander (especially compared to the brute force of the other finishers), but the ability to flip an opponent’s blocks into a mistake makes it easy to knockout a player. However, Embercleave doesn’t play well with tutors, since revealing it for a tutor ruins the element of surprise. If you do have the mana or creatures to cast Embercleave in the same turn that you tutored it, there are still difficult ways to make it work, since you get to choose which Knight gets it after blocks have been declared. Spreading out your equipment for an attack opens up more options for who to give Embercleave to after you see your opponents’ blocks, but you’ve added unecessary difficulty when you could have just chosen a different equipment instead. Though regardless, once it makes it into your hand, it's a simple way to make a massive play, especially when combined with any significantly stat-boosting equipment.

Inspired by this Isshin list doing the same, I added this place to talk about Gwyn's (non-existent) lore for fun! No information specifically about Gwyn exists past her card. However, my search for such lore brought me to the Planeswalker's Guide to Eldraine, which contains enough info on the independent castles and their orders to speculate.

From her color identity and some other hints within the card, Gwyn has presumably received knighthood from the castles of Embereth, Ardenvale, and potentially Locthwain as well. To support this, her visual design contains qualities from all three communities:

  • The segmented pieces of her legs and shoulder armor match Lochthwain’s knights.
  • The ruby breastplate and red-white cloth across her steed match some other Knights from the Burning Yard, in addition to a diamond emblem on the breastplate that calls back to Embereth’s crest.
  • And while more subtle, her gold-trimmed, white cape and circular brooch (calling to Ardenvale’s crest) is only seen in knights of the white castle.

Gwyn might have first been a knight of Embereth. Her lack of a shield and the flames around her sword attest to this most strongly, but pushing into conjecture, it could explain her choice of mounted melee combat and her flavor text’s mention of martial renown. The Eldraine lore article mentions the former as a type of competition held in the Burning Yard’s tournament grounds, and it makes sense that she could be known for her skill and style if she had earned such fame at the endless tournament.

Perhaps she did not earn her fame from the tournament, and “Ashvale” is a great battle where Gwyn demonstrated heroism and made her name known. Maybe instead, “Ashvale” is the name of the small hamlet she hails from that shares a region with Embereth (which would explain the similarity in naming scheme). It all remains conjecture. It’s not even known if Gwyn serves on Emebreth’s council of leadership or if she perished with the fall of the courts in the Phyrexian invasion. Details of “Ashvale” and any concrete stories of Gwyn’s life are completely unknown.

Confidently, it can be said that she is a knight of Embereth and a skilled one at that.

I’ll add miscellaneous tips here as I learn more about the deck myself. Although, I’m going to end up repeating some information written above that I find important.

With mulligans, obviously, keep 3-4 Lands. Look for 1 Equipment or a Tutor card, because even if you get some bad draws on your turns, eventually casting Gwyn with one equipment ready will let you draw cards with her triggers and get something meager going. Utility equipment are great keeps since they grant advantage in the early game before Gwyn is out, but your attacks grow difficult without any combat equipment. Past that: Mana Rocks OR Knights playable on turns 2 and 3 make the hand extremely good. The former lets you consistently get to Gwyn and the latter lets you develop your board ahead of time instead of waiting to do so on turns after you cast Gwyn.

As I described earlier in the Primer, try to sandbag any finishers that aren’t Blackblade Reforged or Two-Handed Axe. You can still sandbag those two if you want (such as having other equipment to play and wanting to save those two for a later, big turn), but in my own experience, those two can be reasonably played early without becoming the archenemy. Opponents will be eyeing them, but they won't immediately remove them, since both equipment require other cards to bring out their lethal power.

In the same vein, try to save your tutors if you already have a piece of equipment. Tutors are your sole lifelines when you desperately need something specific. The most reasonable exception to use them early ends up being a tutor for mana to fight some unlucky draws, such as spending Search for Glory to get Forging the Tyrite Sword or Sword of the Animist. As I mentioned when discussing tutors above, this deck’s equipment almost functions like tools in a toolkit. I might need Conqueror's Flail to secure my play, a Lifelink equipment to grind out an even match, or a Trample equipment to push damage through. While there is intentional overlap in their roles, each still offers enough unique qualities that recklessly using a tutor might throw away any opportunity to get whatever specific piece you need most.

Don’t neglect to level up Fighter Class, assuming more pressing matters don’t demand your mana. While Level 2 can keep your deck moving fast in Gwyn's absence, Level 3 in particular lets every spare knight force a creature to block them, pulling your opponent’s potential blockers away from your main equipment bearer.

When it comes to deck defense and how recklessly you should attack, evaluate how much mana and board presence your opponent has before you tap all your creatures. An opponent in Red might have Haste creatures and burn spells that could threaten you with just high mana and no board. In those situations, spreading out your equipment and attacking with an extra creature (for Gwyn triggers) might get you killed. In a different sceario, you might be playing against an extremely fair +1/+1 counters deck that doesn’t have lots of explosive tricks, but if they have multiple creatures on board, leaving Gwyn alone to block (because of her Vigilance) gives them an opportunity to drop their removal spell and attack for half or more of your life total. The further the game progresses, the more valuable it can be to attack with only your equipment bearer, leaving behind other knights to deter enemy attacks. You could use Gwyn to shuffle equipment over to your blockers, but then again, you might be allowing an opponent to use their removal on your blocker and force your equipment to fall off.

When discarding to effects in the deck (Olivia, Mobilized for War, Inti, Seneschal of the Sun, and Mask of Memory) or for other reasons, value lines that give flexibilty. Any equipment somehow lingering in your hand should be kept, since the strategy hinges on their use, but removal and tutors tend to be valuable in almost all board states. It obviously hurts to discard a board wipe too, since there’s only two in the deck, so as long as you already have a couple knights (and Gwyn) on the battlfield, the safest choice is often to discard any extra knights from your hand. Although, lands are an obvious second choice if you have more than one land in your hand. Keeping your next land drop in hand actually tends to be more valuable than keeping your only knight, since even with no other creatures, you'll always have Gwyn to bear equipment.

When casting Kayla's Reconstruction, keep in mind that only 1/3 of the deck's cards are legal choices. Probability says that you should have 1-2 choices in the 7, so I don't recommend making X greater than 2, though even then, you will sometimes whiff.

For now, that’s all the specific tips I can think of, but I’ll edit and add to this section as I learn more myself. I’ll leave one last reminder reminder that Umezawa's Jitte has a lot of tricks to pull around first strike damage and normal damage steps, which I discuss a couple of in its blurb in the “Coat of Harms” section.

Suggestions

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Quick Change — Heirloom Blade — Jan. 18, 2024
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Drach'Nyen --> Heirloom Blade

After receiving the opportunity to test Drach'Nyen, it became much less appealing. The card continually checks the removed creature's power and toughness in exile, which means it doesn't gain any power if you exile tokens or a Commander that returned to the Command Zone. Further, this deck doesn't need tutorable removal if your playgroup is cool with letting you try out lessons in your "sideboard." Poet's Quill would instead perform the role of tutorable removal at a cheaper total mana cost.

Since I took out three knights in the deck's 3rd Revision, I've felt my consitency of creatures decrease. I wrote off Heirloom Blade a long time ago in a different version of this deck which used to run closer to 30 Knights. I can consistently get one or more pieces of equipment in a game now, but I've started struggling with keeping an equipment bearer that isn't Gwyn herself. There's a chance I've simply been unlucky in my recent games, but regardless, I want to try Heirloom Blade again to see how it helps this new direction for the deck (i.e. embracing a slightly lower creature count).

3rd Revision — Embracing its Nature — Jan. 9, 2024
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Quick Change — Fabled Passage — Dec. 8, 2023
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2nd Revision — Taking My Boots Off + Primer — Nov. 28, 2023
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Quick Change — +1 Tutor for Mana Reasons — Aug. 1, 2023
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1st Revision — More Mana and More Creatures — July 26, 2023
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Date added 1 year
Last updated 3 months
Exclude colors UG
Legality

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

8 - 0 Mythic Rares

54 - 2 Rares

20 - 1 Uncommons

4 - 2 Commons
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 2.83
Tokens Copy Clone, Golem 3/3 C, Rebel 2/2 R, Spirit 3/2 RW, The Monarch, Treasure
Folders zIdeas
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