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Xantcha - Voltron Politics

Commander / EDH BR (Rakdos) Casual

jamosemtg

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Enchantment (19)

Land (37)

Artifact (12)

Creature (11)

Sorcery (8)

Commander (1)

Commander: foil Xantcha, Sleeper Agent

Instant (12)

I've never written a real description for a deck before, but I'm really excited by Xantcha, so here it goes! The idea of this deck is to buff Xantcha, make sure she stays alive during combat by giving her evasion and/or removing anything that would kill her during combat, clear the board of chump blockers, and try to stay alive using prison mechanisms and politics. The deck wins by getting everyone low from Xantcha attacks and politicking and then using xantcha's ability to drain whoever's left. I'll break down the main components a little bit below. Just want to note that I made this deck out of cards already in my collection, so the card quality definitely has room for improvement (though this seems like the type of deck that doesn't really need super powerful cards to work well and be fun!)

I love that the removal in this deck can both act as a form of getting rid of any creature that could kill our Xantcha and as a way of keeping us alive. That's why I have tons of targeted removal in this deck, especially at instant speed. If anything big tries to attack us or block and kill Xantcha during combat, BAM - dead. And since everyone knows you have tons of removal, we can use it as a political tool to get people to not attack us. This is great since we'll be quite lacking in blockers most of the time.
While removal is great at keeping Xantcha alive during combat, she'll generally be a high priority target and therefore prone to removal herself. So I included a few regenerate-like effects that can help.
I included a decent amount of board wipes in the deck but you'll notice that most of them do only a small amount of damage to each creature (4 or less). This way we can get rid of the chump blockers and keep our Xantcha alive. All that's left to block are the bigger guys, which we will likely be able to evade or remove anyways.
A 5/5 attacking people on turn three is alright, but it could be better. I like getting it to 7 power since that means three successful hits eliminates an opponent! And I also like giving it stuff like menace and intimidate to help it get damage through. This is pretty straightforward. There are definitely better buffs out there than the ones I had in my collection.
You'll notice a pretty decent amount of artifact ramp in this deck. Being in black and red, this seems like the best way to be able to abuse Xantcha's activated ability. We can drain our opponents more and draw more cards - all good things. Also, if Xantcha does die, we can easily recast her with all this mana!
I was excited about the idea of bestow when I first started making the deck. It seems too good - buff Xantcha, and when she dies, get a creature! The only downside is that there are only like 10-15 bestow creatures in black/red and most of them are simply not good. So I included anything that seemed worthy.
Since this deck can be very political, I included a couple of political cards such as curses, prison cards, and "attack each turn if able" cards. These all help to get our opponents' life low while protect ourselves, which helps in the endgame. Once everyone else is low, we should be able to just spend mana to use Xantha's ability and drain our opponents.

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