MTG Commander: Elsha of the Infinite

This is a Spellslinger deck based around Elsha of the Infinite, the alternate commander from C19’s Mystic Intellect preconstructed deck.

The general idea of the deck is to get a bunch of mana out, and then play lots of spells off the top of the deck. This increases Elsha’s Prowess, allowing for some big attacks, and triggers other effects like Guttersnipe to win the game. In practice, this deck was a bit inconsistent: it stalls too often when you have a land or creature on top of the deck, and it hasn’t been easy to get win conditions into play before needing to play a lot of spells.

Casting tons of spells like this can be a lot of fun to play! However, it’s not fun to play against at all. Even though the deck is fairly effective, I’m taking it apart because it’s not fun for other players. My original plan was to rebuild Elsha as an Artifact Storm deck, but I decided to build Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain instead. Artifact storm is more effective, but spoiler alert: it’s also not fun to play against.

Now it’s time to take this deck apart, so I can use parts of it for Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest.

Elsha of the Un-funite

MTG Commander: Bad Muldrotha

It looks like my blogging will never really catch up with the decks I’m actually playing regularly, as long as I only ever blog a deck once I’m done playing it. But that’s your problem, not mine. I’m just writing this stuff down in case I want to refer to it some day.

This was another early deck build. At this point I was more focused on “this looks fun to play” than “how does the deck win?” So, we have a pile of perfectly fine cards, but no real focus when it comes time to delivering a killing blow.

The deck isn’t focused on a specific strategy other than “play stuff out of the graveyard.” When it wins, it’s because it has longevity and lots of answers: it’s good at not losing, but not great at winning.

My list of cards to add include Lotus Petal to implement an infinite combo with Muldrotha… without enough mana to actually turn it into a useful win condition… and possibly Fa’adiyah Seer for more graveyard filling.

I haven’t played the deck since I added Hermit Druid and a few other cards, but it won’t help unless the deck adds a solid way to eliminate enemies. I’m setting this deck aside until I have an inspiration for a more focused deck with a specific win condition. At this point Muldrotha is hated enough that I’m not sure it’s worth putting effort into.

Muldrotha, the Rave Guy

MTG Commander: Kazarov, Sengir Pureblood

I have no luck with Rakdos, and yet I feel compelled to try again. Once again, here’s a decklist before I disassemble the deck.

After some tuning I was able to get it to function, but the deck’s timing is very awkward. The objective is to get Kazarov on the board as soon as possible (never as soon as you want), and then use mass-ping spells to quickly add many +1/+1 counters. Kazarov costs a lot, but the spells are cheap. Keeping them in your hand long enough for them to be useful is hard, and all those turns give your opponents plenty of time to draw removal.

I originally ran Whispersilk Cloak to get attacks through more easily, but it’s really hard to keep Kazarov on the board unprotected for a turn. Swiftfoot Boots let you wait only one extra turn for Kazarov and still protect him. Now I know why Lightning Greaves costs more.

My next set of changes to this deck would be to increase my defensive base, probably with more creatures overall, more defenders, and fewer pingers. The pingers are too easy to kill with my own burn spells, not fast enough to provide adequate defense, and not necessary to add tokens to Kazarov late game

Kazarov, Sengir Pureblood

MTG Commander: Neheb the Unworthy

This is one of the first Commander decks I built, after tuning it a bit more towards Discard instead of Minotaur Tribal. The deck isn’t very good. The problem is that Minotaur Tribal is not awesome, but transforming it into a discard deck will just leave me with a deck I won’t enjoy playing.

I’m disassembling this to use the Rakdos color base in another deck, but thought I’d save this for posterity.

Master of None

Alan Ferrency writes about things.

Category: mtg