The Coat of Harms [w/ Primer]

Commander / EDH Aggro Equip Knights Multiplayer RBW (Mardu)

August_Cross

Lands (37)

• 1x Alpine Meadow
• 1x Arena of Glory
• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Axgard Armory
• 1x Buried Ruin
• 1x Castle Locthwain
• 1x Caves of Koilos
• 1x Clifftop Retreat
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Elegant Parlor
• 1x Fabled Passage
• 1x Godless Shrine
• 1x Inventors' Fair
• 1x Isolated Chapel
• 1x Luxury Suite
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Monumental Henge
• 2x Mountain
• 1x Myriad Landscape
• 1x Nomad Outpost
• 1x Path of Ancestry
• 4x Plains
• 1x Sacred Foundry
• 1x Shadowy Backstreet
• 1x Snowfield Sinkhole
• 1x Spectator Seating
• 1x Sulfurous Springs
• 1x Sunlit Marsh
• 3x Swamp
• 1x The Black Gate
• 1x Vault of Champions

Mana (14)

• 1x Myriad Landscape
• 1x Diamond Pick-Axe
• 1x Ambitious Farmhand  ^Flip
• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Knight of the White Orchid
• 1x Orzhov Signet
• 1x Planar Atlas
• 1x Poet's Quill
• 1x Sword of the Animist
• 1x Talisman of Hierarchy
• 1x The Irencrag
• 1x Forging the Tyrite Sword
• 1x Battle Angels of Tyr

Tutor (6)

• 1x Axgard Armory
• 1x Inventors' Fair
• 1x Steelshaper's Gift
• 1x Fighter Class
• 1x Open the Armory
• 1x Forging the Tyrite Sword

Knights (24)

• 1x Ambitious Farmhand  ^Flip
• 1x Inti, Seneschal of the Sun
• 1x Knight of the White Orchid
• 1x Puresteel Paladin
• 1x Westfold Rider
• 1x White Orchid Phantom
• 1x Acclaimed Contender
• 1x Armory Paladin
• 1x Murderous Rider
• 1x Olivia, Mobilized for War
• 1x Shrike Force
• 1x Sigiled Sword of Valeron
• 1x Skyhunter Skirmisher
• 1x Sunrise Cavalier
• 1x Werefox Bodyguard
• 1x Armored Skyhunter
• 1x Balan, Wandering Knight
• 1x Battle Angels of Tyr
• 1x Eowyn, Fearless Knight
• 1x Rohirrim Chargers
• 1x Scurrilous Sentry
• 1x Twinblade Paladin
• 1x Cavalier of Dawn
• 1x Vona, Butcher of Magan

Card Draw (15)

• 1x Castle Locthwain
• 1x Monumental Henge
• 1x Inti, Seneschal of the Sun
• 1x Mask of Memory
• 1x Poet's Quill
• 1x Puresteel Paladin
• 1x Rogue's Gloves
• 1x Acclaimed Contender
• 1x Armory Paladin
• 1x Kayla's Reconstruction
• 1x Armored Skyhunter
• 1x Battle Angels of Tyr
• 1x Court of Ardenvale
• 1x Rohirrim Chargers
• 1x Scurrilous Sentry

Interaction (11)

• 1x Poet's Quill
• 1x Reprieve
• 1x Unexpectedly Absent
• 1x Westfold Rider
• 1x Anguished Unmaking
• 1x Murderous Rider
• 1x Werefox Bodyguard
• 1x Eowyn, Fearless Knight
• 1x Cavalier of Dawn
• 1x Vona, Butcher of Magan
• 1x Argentum Armor

Commander (1)

Equipment (21)

• 1x Bloodforged Battle-Axe
• 1x Diamond Pick-Axe
• 1x Shadowspear
• 1x Tarrian's Soulcleaver
• 1x Vorpal Sword
• 1x Conqueror's Flail
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Mask of Memory
• 1x Poet's Quill
• 1x Rogue's Gloves
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots
• 1x Sword of the Animist
• 1x The Irencrag
• 1x Umezawa's Jitte
• 1x Heirloom Blade
• 1x Loxodon Warhammer
• 1x Mask of Griselbrand
• 1x Maul of the Skyclaves
• 1x Sigiled Sword of Valeron
• 1x Sword of Vengeance
• 1x Argentum Armor

"Enablers" (13)

• 1x Buried Ruin
• 1x Fighter Class
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Puresteel Paladin
• 1x Reprieve
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots
• 1x Unexpectedly Absent
• 1x Forge Anew
• 1x Sevinne's Reclamation
• 1x Werefox Bodyguard
• 1x Balan, Wandering Knight
• 1x Court of Ardenvale
• 1x Cavalier of Dawn

Board Wipes (2)

• 1x Austere Command
• 1x Ruinous Ultimatum

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Sideboard

Other (6)

• 1x Academic Probation
• 1x Environmental Sciences
• 1x Introduction to Prophecy
• 1x Reduce to Memory
• 1x Illuminate History
• 1x Drach'Nyen

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A Strike Force of Well-Armored Meat

This decklist aims to assemble a density of equipment and stack it across a variety of 1-2 bearers, rather than relying solely on the Commander like Voltron strategies do. Because of that gameplan, this deck wins through insurmountable advantage. If the table refuses to answer one of your key pieces or your stacks of equipment as a whole, then you will achieve a direct win through combat within two to three turns. Or, even if your opponents disrupt your immediate win, you may gained enough momentum and still have the right pieces in your hand to keep up the grind and win later.

While I know that "my deck is a 7" has become a meme, this deck genuinely falls within that power level, consistenly winning on Turn 9 in goldfishing with the the majority of that damage being in turns 7-9 after Gwyn enters the battlefield. While goldfishing does not usually indicate deck performance compared to an actual Commander environment, this deck does mirror its goldfishing. The strategy regularly assembles large blocks of keywords, meaning my knights always have the evasion to complicate blocking and get through like there were no other creatures. Further, everyone else at the table often contributes enough damage to compensate for having three opponents. Doesn't matter that I can only knock out one player per turn, because I am still threatening a knockout (or nearly doing so) on any player by the same timeframe of turn 8 or 9. From there, the deck relies on Lifelink, some Vigilance, and my Interaction to buy me time until my next turn. So, this deck performs well in a fair manner at almost every table I bring it to, with the sole exception of struggling at that highest power bracket of casual Commander, like Treasure decks, Urza, most Eldrazi or Dragon decks these days, etc. I am often a threat to the table and even "the archenemy," but it still reamins casual enough and telegraphed in its win condition for me to get slapped around by friends playing precons.

This list is my hyperfixation out of all my Commander decks, and I've worked on it near constantly over literal years now. I’ve improved as a Commander player and in my understanding of the format through re-tooling this deck, so I've done my best to write that knowledge into a primer below, particularly highlighting the rationale behind card choices and how I use them in-game.

Thanks for stopping by the list, and happy brewing!

The Plan of Attack and Its Efficacy

As I said, this deck seeks to stack a large number of equipment on a creature or two and make repeatable, large attacks. Commander damage knockouts remain both viable and very common if you choose to go for them, but by not committing to voltron, we gain some resiliency. 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 actual threat OR 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, Gwyn sits around to keep drawing cards to find the next knight to slam down and gear up.

The deck patiently builds up a board until turns 5-7, which is the range of whenever you usually cast Gwyn based on mana acceleration speeding you up or other factors slowing you down. Any attacks you make in the early game are mostly done to trigger any utility cards that you drew, such as Diamond Pick-Axe. By turn 5 or 6, you will have some 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 started 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.

At a minimum, opponents will always prepare themselves for Gwyn being your equipment bearer, often by holding up removal or Fog-like effects to stop your commander-damage knockout. This explains why you might bide your time and develop your board for an extra turn instead of playing Gwyn the moment you hit 6 mana. You can cast a knight, who will have an entire turn cycle to get over their summoning sickness, before casting Gwyn next turn as a way to equip (and draw cards). Tapping out to cast Gwyn, only for her to get removed immediately, sets you behind the table with probably not enough time to catch up before someone else secures their win. In fact, tapping out to cast Gwyn multiple turns in a row is the worst play pattern this deck can fall into. I intentionally choose a different creature as my equipment bearer to play around my opponents having single-target creature removal.Conqueror's Flail is perhaps the only card in the list that can ensure those risky, all-or-nothing attacks by forcing opponents to use their tricks before you commit to attacks. However, free equip costs let you move equipment to any of your remaining blockers during your 2nd Main Phase. If you see that an opponent has a lot of mana in colors like Red or they just generally have a massive board, I would suggest holding back extra creatures to take your equipment after combat. Or, you can gamble that they don't have removal by using Gwyn as your blocker, since her Vigilance will always keep her available for that job. 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

For the particular way I have built it, this deck can really grind out against other combat decks, and it has some moderate resiliency overall. Its "grinding" ability primarily comes from Lifelink and the deck's consistently high damage output, which lets the me keep its combat-based gameplan moving without fearing immediate death from other threats. Plus, Gwyn draws cards to keep my hand full of gas for however long she sticks around, and some cards (like Gwyn herself) even have Vigilance to perform defense for me. As for the deck's resiliency, it doesn't just come from my recursion cards (listed in the deck's "Enablers" category), but by designing the deck to not require Gwyn for combat. As I described above, I can create boardstates that continue to function after suffering single-target removal. Further, because the deck's power comes from having multiple pieces of equipment in play, creatures become nearly interchangable anytime I need to rebuild from creature-based board wipes. Gwyn becomes the sole creature worth protecting, since she enables the next knight in my hand to start bearing equipment.

The equipment tutors also add a bit of flexibility to any particular game. Probability states that you will draw only one, but I designed the equipment package to contain a variety of utility and to cover deck weaknesses. Sometimes you're in a combat-heavy pod and need Loxodon Warhammer to win the tug-of-war between everybody's lifetotals. Sometimes, you reach for the trusty Umezawa's Jitte to both keep the tokens deck from crushing you AND to provide a win-condition through hoarding charge counters for +2/+2 boosts. And sometimes, you fetch Heirloom Blade, because you realize you sat down with one or more control decks who loaded themselves up with removal. These restricted tutors provide a fun dimension to deckbuilding as I explore how to make equipment function on their own while still adding utility to the toolbox. But, the tutors also add lots of strategic fun by asking me to make those game-by-game analyses, especially since my deck has moved away from explosive, combo-like equipment with each iteration. When I no longer have a "win button," tutors stop being the boring cards that only ever find the deck's win button.

However, by its choice in Commander and strategy, the deck contains a couple inherent flaws. Gwyn's high mana cost of 6 takes time to reach, because using early turns to play my out my low mana-curve of knights and equipment tends to be more meaningful setup than packing this list full of extra mana rocks. (Mana acceleration is always powerful in Commander with the right timing, but in an aggro deck, it takes more specific timing than other strategies to benefit, and I'm encouraged to run only the lowest cost mana rocks.) As an equipment deck, I also have to find both a creature and an equipment before my strategy comes online. While probability states that 1/4 cards should a knight or an equipment/tutor—meaning we get one of each in our opening hand and initial draw—luck continues to a factor. The commander can't be around in the early game to help me draw into lands and more equipment, so I chose to include utility knights and equipment that can do it while she isn't around. Any utility equipment, as well as unassuming cards like Ambitious Farmhand   andAcclaimed Contender, have really pulled their weight in the past to make the deck function. And of course, the equipment tutors help with consistency too. In a hand that's lacking lands or lacking any equipment besides the tutor, you can burn the tutor for a utility equipment that generates mana or draws cards (respectively). Remember though, this risk reveals to your opponents that you needed that piece. Cutthroat players or people who are liberal with their interaction will happily remove your Sword of the Animist or other choice of card.

Since I've tried 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 doesn't appear all the time (outside of Gwyn), since the many knights who have Vigilance were excluded from the list for lacking other usefulness. (Although, I'll discuss my creature criteria later in the "Knights" section of “Roles to Play.") 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 my Sword of Vengeance keeps an extra knight untapped, a small force of 1-2 blockers can’t intercept an entire army of tokens. Without a board wipe in hand, rely on Lifelink to keep yourself alive as you race opponents that go wide. But more than that, consider the speed of everyone's decks when you make these decisions. If you're moving faster than everyone else, then we're happy to make attacks and reap all the triggers, but as soon as other decks start coming online, you need to play with extra caution and not get tunnel vision towards racing the other players.

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. While I describe this like it is some kind of unusual weakness, aggro decks intentionally choose to run low amounts of mana rocks, because their gameplan is designed around taking aggressive actions in those early turns. . Anecdotally (from my recent games), the deck will have sufficient mana, barring bad luck. So to elaborate, a "lack of ramp" just means that I don't have a ton of cards that exclusively accelerate my mana with no downside or conditions, particularly because 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, which is why I'm willing to splurge for cards like Cavalier of Dawn and Battle Angels of Tyr. In this case, the list does not consistently spend its early turns playing land ramp and mana rock staples, and even if some of those are in hand, it might be better sequencing to cast my equipment and knights on curve. This creates that 5-6 turn setup period, where I usually need to play a knight and 1-2 equipment (though not necessarily Gwyn) before my deck comes online, and then I can 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 me.

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?

For the most part, I've already discussed the deck's power level above. Unless you 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 3+ equipment. Even after assembling 4+ cards for this win condition, it takes more than one turn of combat to move against the whole table. So, while I could theoretically get a knockout by turn 8 or 9, I am expecting the deck to take longer to definitively get its win. Fundamentally, a high mana cost of 6 also 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 I have to juggle in deck construction to make it function. This was not an easy deck to build, especially since I wanted it to contain some particular, powerful cards while still being transparent about when/how it wins.

Of course, 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 repeatedly make some big attacks. I wanna make sure it’s okay that I’m gonna interact someimtes, that I’ve got equipment tutors (in a 'toolbox' way), and that I’ve got some cards in here like Shadowspear, Jitte, and fetch lands.”

Roles to Play

I've created short blurbs about all of this deck’s categories. I will not individually discuss every card except for the equipment, which received their own section called, “The Coat of Harms.” Here, I’ll cover the logic behind each category, alongside any other notes that I think would help someone analyze my category tags and 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 compensated by adding the white pairings of dual lands from several cycles, while I excluded most Rakdos options. (I'll always have access to white, while still checking off the one or two pips I need of my off-colors.) I also spent the majority of my allocated slots for tapped lands on Dominaria’s and Kaldheim’s tap-duals with land subtypes. Thus 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 trying to keep a spread of basics and those tap-duals with subtypes, I could add check lands, Castle Locthwain, and some Modern Horizons 3 lands (e.g. Monumental Henge), while still counting on them to enter untapped just like my Battlebond lands and pain lands. Past that, the addition of the fetch lands was only because I added in Sevinne's Reclamation, but it works nicely with my many non-basic lands that still have subtypes.

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

• Specifically {R}{R}{W}{W}{W}{B}{B} for Ruinous Ultimatum
• {W}{W} for most of the deck’s cards, especially the knights and Austere Command. On the above topic of pip struggles, Knight of the White Orchid is an example of an early demand for two white that might clash against casting an Olivia, Mobilized for War after.
• {W}{W}{W} for Kayla's Reconstruction and Cavalier of Dawn.
• {B}{B} for Murderous Rider for the pip-hungry Vorpal Sword. The high amount of Black in my manabase is also from Swamp cards meant to maximize the chance that Castle Locthwain comes into play untapped.

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 remaining Haste creatures like Sunrise Cavalier. Plenty of other Knights have ETBs, but their effects fall mostly under utility already.

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. Even cards that help me dig will help me find lands, but those have their own category up next.

Card Draw

All of these cards help me dig in some way, especially for equipment, while Gwyn is unavailable in the Command Zone. Castle Locthwain is obviously not a card advantage engine driven by synergy, but it has been a helpful failsafe for bad luck games, where I need just one piece of equipment, one land, or one equipment bearer before my hand to starts functioning. 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

I already advocated for specifically equipment tutors in my section about the deck's game plan. Online commander discourse made me fear that tutors would take the fun away from my deck and sour a casual table, but I have found this sentiment to be more contextual than that. Restricted/conditional tutors add a fun deckbuilding challenge, and as along as your deck isn't using it to search for an instantly winning combo piece, then you aren't necessarily killing your variance. Some decks might need a core piece for their gameplan, like Astral Slide in a cycling deck or Heartless Summoning in that one guy's Acererak deck, but the presence of such tutors means you can start to include one-off cards as situational tech. You start building a "toolbox" of utility that the tutors let you search through. It's skill-testing and engaging to analyze which of my (currently) 21 equipment best handles the situation, because my answer changes every single game and maybe even turn by turn.

This list averages 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 I use my equipment for and when you might want them. You usually only get one, so take some time to deliberate what single card will put you in the game. As I said before, maybe you just need that one utility equipment to smooth over mana or to start digging for other equipment. Maybe you need Sigiled Sword of Valeron to keep yourself stocked with creatures to wield your hand full of equipment, or an Heirloom Blade for similar purposes in a removal heavy environment. Perhaps you need the lifegain, and so on. These exist as your one lifeline to make the deck pop in a game where it might otherwise struggle. I added them because it adds consistency and some strategic fun while piloting it.

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 killing attack. Similar to tutors, probability states that you will usually get 1-2 pieces of interaction, no more. So, make them count. Maybe you can hoard it, but if you can properly evaluate the board, proactive usage is frequently much more effective. Don't just look at who has the scariest board, but whose STRATEGIES are the best against yours. I can beat the other combat decks through my usual gameplan, so I might choose to spend my removal on an Academy Manufactor that's drowning me out in advantage that I can't otherwise interact with.

“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. Opponents still love to remove Gwyn, since her supportive functions are still key to the deck's continuing synergy. So, other ones can protect her from being removed, such as Werefox Bodyguard or the classic pair of boots. Even a clever player can cast Unexpectedly Absent on X=0 to save a vital piece of equipment. Similarly, manually equipping Conqueror's Flail to a creature before Gwyn hits the board protects 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. Like I described in the section on Interaction, this deck can handle other creature- and combat-based strategies, but it doesn't naturally interact with noncreature types like enchantments. 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.

The Coat of Harms

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 to more definitively end the game. As my revisions made this deck more gradual in its combat-based wins, finisher equipment have become cards that provide repeatable and sometimes growing effects. If left unchecked, they can help secure my victory by pushing my advantage beyond what's reasonable for my opponents to address.

• Bloodforged Battle-Axe

I previously talked myself out of adding this card, because I feared that its play patterns were too greedy and inconsistent. Why take time to build up a threat when other equipment have immediate damage? I underestimated the speed of Bloodforged Battle-Axe, because in practice, it immediately reaches that threshold of being out of hand. If I'm already taking 3 turns of combat to win, then I require only three or so copies of Bloodforged Battle-Axe to push a knight to 10+ damage and threaten lethal over those turns. Due to Double Strike and each copy of Bloodforged Battle-Axe triggering independently, I can reasonably exceed those numbers in a single turn or two. Moments like that make this axe an extremely powerful, snowballing finisher.

• 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.

• 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 an entirely unique situational utility. Loxodon Warhammer provides the same keywords with a larger boost if you need to gain as much life as possible, but Shadowspear offers those benefits at a cheaper cost, with some added utility. 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.

• Tarrian's Soulcleaver

While Tarrian's Soulcleaver looks like my combat equipment, it seems to have potential as a finisher too, simply through its ability to create a growing threat. I'm reaching for this halberd if my table contains multiple creature-heavy decks, especially if none of them are dedicated to tokens or if I already have my Umezawa's Jitte to keep small tokens in check.

• 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 (especially when contrasted against 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, its heavy demand for Black mana limits its usage. Even if I cast it later in the game, it usually 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. Still, Vorpal Sword provides a surefire answer to lifegain decks and can enable a naturally evasive knight (someone other than your main bearer) to squeeze in a 2nd Knockout in a single turn.

• 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. No other equipment in the deck can block my opponent's interaction for my whole team.

• Mask of Memory

A staple utility equipment here to draw cards. It offers the most card selection in our deck, but it obviously requires an evasive knight to reliably get triggers. Not a bad tutor choice if you have no other equipment or tutors and are hoping that knights like Skyhunter Skirmisher can dig you into some more equipment.

• Lightning Greaves

Another classic Commander equipment. Obviously, the utility it provides is protecting Gwyn. After taking these boots out for a while, I realized that Gwyn remained a magnet for removal, due to still serving a pivotal role as an enabler and as my primary card draw engine. While the Shroud frustrated me in the past, it became less of an issue when Gwyn stopped using other equipment in the first place. Her 5/5 body and Menace make it very easy to find attacks, even if she's unboosted by any equipment.

• Poet's Quill

Perhaps the best utility equipment in this deck—bringing interaction, mana fixing, or even some old-fashioned digging—with the concession that your table lets you have a sideboard for Lesson cards. Drach'Nyen sits in the sideboard as a replacement option for Poet's Quill if people don't feel like changing the rules. However, I might begin experimenting with leaving Poet's Quill in anyway. It checks all of my criteria, providing a small stat boost AND a keyword (Lifelink specifically is good), and since my Commander and other cards take care of overall card advantage, the one-use rummage effect might still be meaningul card selection.

• 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. As I stated in previous sections, even drawing one extra card per turn will maintain your hand size as you cast one spell per turn.

• Swiftfoot Boots

Our other pair of boots, equally here to protect our Commander. Hexproof makes moving equipment on and off Gwyn rather easy, while Gwyn's free equips also mean that any knight could benefit from some emergency Haste.

• Sword of the Animist

Obviously, this sword repeatedly accelerates our mana. Its reasonable casting and equip costs, especially considering that it offers a +1/+1 stat boost, offer a nice long-term plan if your early turns are plagued by a lack of lands. However, in contrast to Diamond Pick-Axe, this card does not protect itself, and the sword's infamy has earned its share of removal at the tables I've brought it to. It's a staple for mana acceleration, but that means people will be wise to your tricks.

• Everflame, Heroes' Legacy

While The Irencrag provides utility in the early game as a mana rock, the equipment part of the card provides nothing but a combat boost. The timing works out well, providing the mana to cast Gwyn and transforming after I do so, just in time to contribute to my "post-Gwyn go-mode." I know from running Plate Armor in the past that a +3/+3 bonus is a large one, even without any combat keywords. Still, in the worst case scenario, it becomes an equipment to start drawing cards from Gwyn triggers. An all-around unsung hero of equipment decks.

• Umezawa's Jitte

The all-in-one package of equipment. No other equipment in this deck shares its utility of keeping small creatures in check, and yet, it can still provide constant, powerful combat boosts. However, I find it more fun for everyone and arguably more effective to hoard charge counters. Players get to keep their small creatures for a while and feel like they're still playing (until it becomes critical to disrupt their boards), but not only are you expanding the size of creatures you can remove, you are "secretly" building towards a point where you can just attack and burn those charge counters to kill someone. So, Jitte even gets to be a finisher through providing a snowballing win-con. Maybe you burn some counters to get you out of a crucial situation, or maybe burning them all at once can push whatever stack of equipment you’ve assembled into a potential knockout. However, prepare contingencies for whenever 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. Use a Conqueror's Flail, Reprieve, or even just pay attention to who is tapped out if you're trying to secure such a committal attack. Finally, remember that you get two charge counters on First Strike damage before you proceed to normal damage. You can spend those counters to get tricky before 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 to another creature 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 performs excellently, even individually.

• Heirloom Blade

Much like Bloodforged Battle-Axe, I severely underestimated this card. Its utility can single-handedly keep this deck functioning in a high removal environment, as it keeps your hand loaded with whatever equipment bearer you need, right as you need it. This isn't even mentioning its large combat boost, or the fact that it has the cheapest equip cost in the deck, making it easy to manually equip several times while Gwyn isn't around. Especially due to that low equip cost, you can have succesful games with nothing but an Heirloom Blade for several turns. Ancedotally, some of its recent performances amaze me that I ever cut it in the first place.

• Mask of Griselbrand

For a long time, I kept this card out due to its lack of a stat boost. However, it fits this deck as another kind of enabler. Flying and Lifelink make for easy attacks, especially since the lifegain protects us in its absence as a blocker. That lifeagin and its death trigger also makes it an outstanding flying blocker, simply because nobody will want to attack into it and outright benefit you. But, that death trigger brings it subtlest benefit: deterring removal. While it doesn't truly "protect" whatever wears it, Mask of Griselbrand can reward you for what was supposed to be an opponent's good decision, and even if it only triggers once in a game, that might be enough to refill your hand for the rest of the game.

• Loxodon Warhammer

Perhaps the strongest combat 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 significantly increases your damage output and gains you large amounts of life to keep you safe. I often reach for Loxodon Warhammer first when I tutor for Trample or when I need as much life as possible, but don’t forget to evaluate if you should instead grab Shadowspear for its activated ability or Sword of Vengeance for its variety of keywords besides Trample.

• Maul of the Skyclaves

One of two equipment in the deck to grant Flying, and the only one with a stat boost. (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.

• Sigiled Sword of Valeron

An unimpressive include, but especially after the loss of Glimmer Lens in this list, I am interested in the idea of a "tutorable creature." While Heirloom Blade helps you deck fight through removal, Sigiled Sword of Valeron can provide you a stream of bodies during games where you only draw one knight. At the very least, I think it has potential as a way to turn stacks of equipment into extra cards by creating a knight for each individual equipment. I mean, it passes my criteria better than other card: it provides a statboost, a relevant keyword, and it has a revelant utility on top of that.

• Sword of Vengeance

The all-in-one of my combat equipment. 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. Syr Gwyn, a Sword of Vengeance on the board, and 7 Knights in hand is probably enough to play a game of Commander. (Winning that game might be another matter, but who knows? This Sword puts in incredible work.)

• Argentum Armor

I used to have my reservations about running repeatable removal like this and Vona, Butcher of Magan. However, if my opponents lack the removal to get Argentum Armor off the field, then they were likely to die anyway without completely outpacing me in a race. In that way, Argentum Armor represents a finisher for the deck, where if unanswered for more than two turn cycles, I will have likely won the game through an ever growing gap in resources. I will inevitably pick away anything that could stop me, giving me a victory by default if they weren't already likely to be dead through combat damage.

Lore from the Ancient Tomes

This section exists for a bit of silly fun and to talk about Eldraine.

Inspired by this Isshin list doing the same, I added this place to talk about Gwyn's (non-existent) lore! 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 evokes Embereth’s crest.
• And while more subtle, her white and gold-trimmed cape, as well as her circular brooch (evoking Ardenvale’s crest), are only seen in knights of the white castle Ardenvale.

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. We don't know if Gwyn serves on Emebreth’s council of leadership, or even 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, I can at least posit that she is knight of Embereth and a skilled one at that.

Tactics for Dire Times

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 or natural evasion on your knight. 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.

Try to save your tutors if you already have a piece of equipment. Tutors are your sole lifelines when you desperately need something specific. Whatever one equipment you already have might be the right one to compete against your opponent's strategies, so your mana could go towards further developing your board and pulling ahead. This is what it means for tutors to be "tempo minus," if any of you are unfamiliar with the concept of tempo. It takes mana to cast a tutor, so that mana is no longer developing your board to dig you out of a disadvantageous state or to build your own advantage. However, tutors can still make themselves worthwhile through the simple power of having the exact card you need. Again, maybe you have a Maul of the Skyclaves that already boosts your combat, but you need to search for Shadowspear as the cheapest source of Lifelink to keep you alive at a precarious lifetotal. 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, meaning you can theoretically draw into something you need, 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, if 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.

This tip repeats some information from other sections, but as a rule of thumb, as the game winds on and your opponents come online, you should be willing to be more passive and bide your time. Eventually, you will have to care deck defense and how recklessly you should attack, so 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 main equipment bearer, so that you can leave 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, especially if Gwyn leaves the battlefield too. Sometimes, the right play might even be to not attack at all, because people really don't like attacking into a 10-power creature with Lifelink and First Strike.

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 also 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 knight or two (and Gwyn) on the battlefield, the safest choice is often to discard any extra knights from your hand. Although, lands can be a second choice for discards 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. 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.

Date added	2 years
Last updated	4 months
Exclude colors	UG
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	6 - 0 Mythic Rares 54 - 3 Rares 21 - 1 Uncommons 7 - 2 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.83
Tokens	Copy Clone, Golem 3/3 C, Knight 2/2 W w/ Vigilance, On an Adventure, Spirit 3/2 RW, The Monarch, Treasure
Folders	zIdeas