Dear Azami: Oona, Queen of the…Eldrazi?!

Hello everyone! I’m back for a second week in a row. This month has been a bit weird, but after this we should be going back to the normal schedule with Sean and me alternating weeks.

If any of you are going to be at #SCGWOR next weekend, I might see you there. I’m going to be playing in the Legacy Open, but if that goes poorly I’ll be looking to get in a few games of Commander. Having a big event all but literally come to my doorstep once or twice a year is pretty awesome, and playing in them has helped me grow as a player.

On the topic of Commander, I recently added The Gitrog Monster to my Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord deck, and the Frog Horror has been insane in every game that I’ve gotten to play it in. Being able to chain dredge triggers to mill 30+ cards in one shot is one of the sillier things I’ve done, and despite the card’s hype, I think people might be underselling its power a little.

Now, let’s see where the submissions take us this week:

I’ll admit, out of all the Oona decks that I’ve seen, this is the first that is even trying to be casual. Usually the gameplan I see from the Faerie queen is as many ways to make infinite mana as possible and then simply using her to exile all opponents’ libraries in one shot, with kills coming as early as turns 4 to 5. I actually passed over this submission a few times because of that reputation, but when I finally looked at what Benjamin was doing, I had to laugh. Processors haven’t gotten a lot of attention since they came out, but I consider them the most interesting of the various Eldrazi options and this deck deserved a spotlight.

Now, onto the changes.

The Lands

Out:

I’ve never been a fan of the storage lands, and while this deck wants to ramp, it can’t afford to take turns off to build up the storage counters. I’m cutting Foundry of the Consuls because you really don’t want to sacrifice your lands for any benefit, let alone a mere two tokens. You do want more colorless utility lands than most decks, thanks to the colorless costs on some Eldrazi, but we can get a better benefit than this.

In:

I wouldn’t normally go to the lengths of suggesting fetchlands for a deck just to get slightly better access to colored mana, but you’re already running Underground Sea, so I’m not terribly concerned with budget. Sunken Hollow gives you another very solid two-color land that’s fetchable and will almost always enter the battlefield untapped.

I wanted to up your land count by one, as you’re a fairly big-mana deck and you wanted both more ramp and more lands for the list to function correctly. The land I wound up picking for this slot was Eldrazi Temple, as it acts as a pain-free Ancient Tomb for the vast majority of your creatures and their abilities. Keep in mind that devoid creatures are colorless for the purpose of that mana ability, even if they still have color identity.

The Creatures

Out:

Mistbind Clique and Sower of Temptations are weird inclusions, and I get the sense that they’re only here as remnants from an old Faerie Tribal build of the deck. Both are solid tempo plays but have no real interaction with the rest of your gameplan.

Essence Depleter and Ruination Guide would both be good cards for aggressive Eldrazi strategies that want to clock your opponents as quickly as possible, but this isn’t that deck.

Warden of Geometries is underwhelming as a creature and pretty bad as a mana rock. I’d rather have a card that’s great at one of those roles than one that’s bad at both.

And finally we come to Deathless Behemoth. A 6/6 with vigilance is relevant in Commander, but it’s not quite at the size where your opponents will need to double-block to kill it. The ability to sacrifice Scions to bring it back is nice, but when the creature it’s on isn’t dominant in combat, that isn’t really all that attractive. Given that I have a better use in mind for spare tokens, I don’t want to keep Deathless Behemoth in the deck.

In:

You were already running most of the relevant Eldrazi cards, so I had to look elsewhere for new creatures. Faceless Butcher is the original Oblivion Ring and is great removal when you can Processor the creature it’s exiling. That strategy gets even better when paired with Deadeye Navigator, which is the beginning of a small bounce theme that I’m building into the deck. Many of your Processors have enters-the-battlefield triggers, so having ways to get more value out of them is great.

Diluvian Primordial puts multiple cards into exile and lets you cast the best instants and sorceries out of your opponent’s graveyards. On top of that, if you get the point where you’ve set up a bounce loop with Deadeye Navigator or one of the other cards I’ll be adding, you can repeatedly exile a spell to cast it, process it back to the graveyard, and then recast it by flickering the Primordial

Our last addition is Lord of the Void, which I’ve been impressed with every time it hits the battlefield. There should almost always be someone without a flyer to attack, and then you get to exile seven cards and get a creature into play. Given the average power of creatures in Commander, this can get out of hand very quickly while giving you a huge amount of exiled cards to process.

The Artifacts

Out:

I’ve said that your deck wants to ramp. It really doesn’t have a use for Dimir Keyrune. I’d much rather have an artifact that taps for more than one mana.

In:

Speaking of mana rocks, Thran Dynamo brings you up to seven mana the turn after you cast it, which is right in the territory of where you can start dropping Eldrazi. It also adds that much more punch to activating Oona, and even without the infinite mana plan, it’s not unreasonable to try to deck someone over the course of a game.

Erratic Portal and Cloudstone Curio come in as repeatable ways to bounce your creatures, and while these cost a little more to use than Deadeye Navigator, they have the benefit of working with the Processors that have a cast trigger.

Illusionist’s Bracers is one of my favorite cards in Commander, and in this deck it turns Oona into an unbelievably efficient mill engine while also supercharging some of some of your more random creatures like Prophet of Distortion and Endbringer.

The Enchantments

Out:

Parallax Tide is definitely cute, but the more you try to use it, the tighter your window to process the lands away is, and even if you’re successful, there’s no way to reuse it or get more than that single burst of value out of it. Even if there were, do you really want to be the guy jumping through hoops to play repeatable land destruction?

In:

Descent into Madness is an evil card. It’s on-theme and you can break parity by pumping out tokens with Oona, but I’d still be careful about playing this in most groups. The main reason that I’m actually recommending this is that I’ve always been interested in Descent and this is the perfect deck for it. In addition, unless you’re willing to count it as a one-card win button on par with Tooth and Nail, this doesn’t break any of the rules you set forth for a fair deck.

Hedonist’s Trove is a weird way to get value from exiled cards while giving you a lot of cards to process. It also ensures that you’ll keep making land drops well into the late game and can force a graveyard-centric deck to start rebuilding from scratch.

The Planeswalkers

In

This is probably one of the first times I’ve added a Planeswalker to one of the decks I’m editing, but when a card is perfect for a deck, it’s perfect. Ashiok provides a constant stream of exiled cards for you to process and has a relatively low threat profile, so your opponents won’t automatically gun for the laneswalker. Occasionally you’ll use the –X, but that’s not the important part.

The Spells

Out:

You were running more countermagic than you needed to, so I’m cutting the more conditional cards. Horribly Awry is especially bad, since you mostly want to counter haymaker spells, and most of those cost more than four mana.

For similar reasons, I’m cutting Complete Disregard. When your removal spells can only hit utility creatures, they’re rarely going to alter the course of the game. Blessed Reincarnation can target anything, but the fact that you give them another creature makes it fairly weak, even if they can’t control what they get.

Flaying Tendrils is pretty much only good against tokens, and since you’re at least partially a token deck, this is not a card I want anywhere in the list.

Ghostly Flicker and Stolen Goods are fine value cards, but you can’t process in the middle of an instant-speed Flicker, and if you want to get value out of your creatures, I’d prefer the repeatable engines that I added. As for Stolen Goods, it’ll only give you one card to process about a third of the time, and if you want to play your opponent’s cards, I’d prefer Lord of the Void.

In:

I wanted to give you solid exile-based spells, and these certainly qualify. Curse of the Swine can mop up as many huge creatures as you need to and only leaves 2/2s behind, while Ashes to Ashes doesn’t leave any tokens behind but takes a chunk of life when you cast it. Ertai’s Meddling is the counterspell that you really want, basically giving a spell suspend X. Even an X of one or two should give you enough room to process it into oblivion, but even if you don’t have an immediate follow-up to the Meddling, being able to put an opposing haymaker in limbo for several turns is amazingly powerful.

Putting it all together, here’s the finished decklist:

Oona, Queen of the Fae

Levi Byrne

Test deck on 06-28-2016

Commander

Creatures (31)

• 1 Faceless Butcher
• 1 Deadeye Navigator
• 1 Diluvian Primordial
• 1 Lord of the Void
• 1 Oblivion Sower
• 1 Kozilek's Channeler
• 1 Blight Herder
• 1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
• 1 Drowner of Hope
• 1 Fathom Feeder
• 1 Smothering Abomination
• 1 Ulamog's Nullifier
• 1 Conduit of Ruin
• 1 Void Winnower
• 1 Wasteland Strangler
• 1 Mind Raker
• 1 Sire of Stagnation
• 1 Bane of Bala Ged
• 1 Cryptic Cruiser
• 1 Eldrazi Skyspawner
• 1 Ulamog's Reclaimer
• 1 Endbringer
• 1 Deepfathom Skulker
• 1 Mindmelter
• 1 Prophet of Distortion
• 1 Sifter of Skulls
• 1 Reality Smasher
• 1 Thought-Knot Seer
• 1 Bearer of Silence
• 1 Matter Reshaper
• 1 Cultivator Drone

Planeswalkers (1)

• 1 Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver

Lands (38)

• 1 Cabal Coffers
• 1 Underground River
• 10 Swamp
• 10 Island
• 1 Underground Sea
• 1 Ancient Tomb
• 1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
• 1 Polluted Delta
• 1 Petrified Field
• 1 Watery Grave
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Eldrazi Temple
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1 Sunken Hollow
• 1 Spawning Bed
• 1 Blighted Cataract
• 1 Blighted Fen
• 1 Westvale Abbey

Spells (29)

• 1 Dissipate
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Ashes to Ashes
• 1 Skullclamp
• 1 Ertai's Meddling
• 1 Erratic Portal
• 1 Thran Dynamo
• 1 Cloudstone Curio
• 1 Dimir Signet
• 1 Leyline of the Void
• 1 Damnation
• 1 Faerie Trickery
• 1 Bitterblossom
• 1 Memory Plunder
• 1 Sadistic Sacrament
• 1 Everflowing Chalice
• 1 Leyline of Anticipation
• 1 Descent into Madness
• 1 Illusionist's Bracers
• 1 Voidwalk
• 1 Curse of the Swine
• 1 Silence the Believers
• 1 Reality Shift
• 1 Hedonist's Trove
• 1 Hedron Archive
• 1 Transgress the Mind
• 1 Grip of Desolation
• 1 Spell Shrivel
• 1 Void Shatter

And the additions, sorted by price.

The changes add up to $75.42, and as always, Benjamin will receive $20 in store credit to StarCityGames.com to help make those changes.

One of the things I really enjoyed this week is that I’m familiar with both Oona decks and Eldrazi decks, but I’d never even thought about the two being combined like this. That’s what I love about Commander, because there are decks that can exist here that just aren’t possible anywhere else.

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