I don’t usually appear in this space, having stepped back in May in order to finish working on my book… but unfortunately Cassidy has had to step back as well due to his life duties as well, which means I’m just filling in temporarily as Jess searches for a replacement partner. Sad as it is to see him go, life happens, and hopefully it is just “bye for now” rather than “bye” as he’s had a pretty good run in this column and has often done this job better than I have – and I “invented” it! But that presents all of you, our illustrious readers, with a potential opportunity: if you would like to potentially be that partner, today is your opportunity to email us your CV as a writer about our favorite subject, Commander! Email us at dearazami AT gmail.com and tell us about yourself, your experience with writing (not required but it certainly helps!) and with Commander (…this one is required!) and we’ll figure it out together from there.

The last time we did this we received a few dozen submissions and had to figure out how to fairly distribute the frankly limited number of “guest appearance” slots we have to offer a new author an opportunity to connect to our readership. Realistically we can only explore our two or three best candidates before having to select a new author to join Jess in the wild experience that is helping Commander players build better decks and have more fun, but at the worst we’ll try and get back to everyone who has stepped forward to put their name in the hat. So email us to say hi and we’ll see about going forward on an adventure together!

This is exactly the sort of challenge I will take up every time, so – let’s get to work. First there is a big structural flaw that needs to be addressed, but the rest all comes down to tactics and what you’re trying to accomplish in a game. The structural flaw is the mana count – this list has just thirty lands – but it should operate fine once we’ve gotten the count up to the more typical 36 or 37 that you’d expect to see for a Commander deck. Let’s add those first and get on to the meat of the discussion:

In:

We’ll owe seven slots that need to be emptied out later in the process, but we can move on to addressing the real problems with what the deck is trying to accomplish. The first big issue, to me, is the idea of the budget point we’re at – budget doesn’t have to mean “bad cards,” budget just means inexpensive, and there are a lot of powerful commons, uncommons, rares and mythics out there to be had for not very much money at all. Lots of those will work with Brago too, so we won’t lack for solid options when building a Brago deck from the bottom up. But “cost” has been a problem here in a second way as well – this deck is playing at least one mana down the curve than other Commander decks, if not two. When you’re trying to battle your opponent’s four-drops with your deck full of two-drops, you have to get really far ahead of them and beat down so quickly that they can’t stabilize before you’ve struck for lethal – but here you have three opponents, not just one, and they start with twice as much life to boot. Cards like Sky Spirit and Mardu Woe-Reaper aren’t going to get there in this format, so we’re going to have to start looking at moving up the mana curve as well as being willing to throw a wee bit of money at the deck. This is the fundamental reason we needed to add that many more lands in order to come into line with what other Commander decks are doing: cheap drops get outclassed too quickly to work in Commander, and the sweet spot is 37 lands to allow us to battle with four- to six-drops rather than two- to four-drops.

Some cheap drops are still going to be great – I’m happily keeping anything that works with a solid enters-the-battlefield trigger for Brago to reuse, so long as it’s not prone to bogging the game down. As far as “expense” is concerned, our default tends to be about $50, and after the $20 coupon for participating in this week’s edition of Dear Azami that leaves the cost to you topping off at the $30 range you’d listed as your reasonable budget, so I’m going to consider that a hard upper boundary and adjust my suggestions accordingly. (Astute readers will of course figure out that is the only reason I didn’t add Winding Canyons to the manabase, in what has to be the longest-running gag of the entire column…) So what we’re looking for is creatures in the four-drop range, topping out around six-drops (though a sprinkling of seven-drops can’t actually hurt) and on a reasonable price budget… and the spells we need to make them work.

Let’s start by making some cuts:

That’s 39 cards out, and we’ve added seven lands already so we have 32 slots left to fill – and I’ll try to keep the general balance about the same, since we do want to keep playing more creatures that work well with Brago turn after turn. But it’s also worth noting that Brago can flicker any permanent type, not just creatures – you’re play with some of that here with things like Ichor Wellspring, but we can do a lot more if we try. Flickering is good with enters-the-battlefield triggers, obviously, but less-obviously it is also intriguing with leaves-play abilities or cards that do not naturally untap of their own accord… Mereike Ri Beret would be an interesting target for Brago to blink turn after turn, but alas, the extra color forbids that from being an option.

Structurally, we need a little more ability to control the game and protect ourselves from the worst – a little countermagic goes a long way in Commander, and I would want three or four counterspells in order to make sure we don’t get Insurrectioned out or combo killed in awkward fashion. We also want a bit more pinpoint removal, at least some of which needs to function at instant speed so that we can stop the worst from happening, but we’re largely going to rely on permanent cards for removal effects so we can have fun Blinking them with our Commander. We’re not really going to be a Wrath-y deck because we’re committing tons of creatures to the field, but with a higher budget I’d probably have still found room for Oblivion Stone and Austere Command. Instead, we shall simply do without and pursue unusual ways to have fun instead.

Ditto for card advantage effects – everything should scale bigger by working with our Commander if possible, and I’m going to avoid the usual spate of “good stuff” inclusions I’d otherwise be tempted to play, such as Fact or Fiction. In fact, I expect to play a fair number of cards I’ve never played before just because I don’t usually explore the Blink side of things; I don’t really go for Deadeye Navigator shenanigans, and a commander like Brago is pretty specific in how it plays so I expect to stretch a little and do some deep Gatherer searches.

Let’s start by seeing what we’ve kept.

The Artifacts

We do want a bit more mana-fixing, and the reason I’d cut Darksteel Ingot was not because I didn’t want the effect but because we can get a comparable fixer that trades the Ingot’s indestructibility for an enters-the-battlefield trigger that Brago might be able to capitalize on instead. I’m also concerned that Brago might be a bit difficult to connect with – you may be able to negotiate for a clean attack in order to get your triggers at least sometimes, but once you start pulling ahead that sort of cooperation stops being an option and we need to potentially upgrade Brago’s evasion to something stronger than flying. That was why we added Rogue’s Passage to our manabase, and that’s also why we’re going to add an equipment card here for just that purpose as well.

Two slots get cut in order to make room for lands, and that last slot will go towards our blinkable recurring removal plan…

In:

The Spells

Here is where things will start to get interesting, and we’ll parse this out based on our immediate needs. We have Oblation and Afterlife as our definite removal spells and options on Angelic Shield and Vanish Into Memory; we may want to use those on our own creatures, but we could use them on an opponent’s threat just as readily. We culled a fair number of cards from this section for being weaker than desired and have eleven slots to fill back into unless we want to add more – but since we want most of our Blinkable things to be creatures just so we can enjoy the added benefits of having a body to attack with, this is mostly going to be leaned on to give Vicki the ability to defend herself in a tight situation and proactive things that will help develop her board and keep the balance of power swinging in her favor if she plays her cards right.

And don’t worry, you’ll need to read quite a few of the things we’re playing today, because things can really start to hit the deep end once you start looking for Blinkable permanents that do something interesting. But we’ll start by adding a few pieces of countermagic and another instant-speed removal spell:

I would normally start with Counterspell, Arcane Denial, Hinder and Spell Crumple in order to protect us against recursion, but we’re on a tight budget and have a lot of holes to fill, so upgrading our countermagic is not quite worth the added expense it asks for. It’s worth doing if you either have them extra already or want to plan on it for later, but the number of times that they’ll come up and be better is probably not actually that high. I’m just something of a perfectionist when it comes to making choices for my own decks – I refuse to allow such things as “price of card access” to affect whether I’m playing the cards I want to be playing or not, at least at the lower end of the range – but Dear Azami has been nothing if not a lesson in getting over my own stumbling blocks while trying to help others get over theirs as well. This isn’t tournament Magic, there are no $10,000 prizes you’re potentially losing out on by giving up small edges due to card availability or price, and fifteen-cent commons counter spells just as readily as the mightiest of Mana Drains ever hoped to.

In that same line of thinking, I’d rather have Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile than Afterlife and Crib Swap, but as far as budget replacement choices go these are reasonable. I don’t really like giving my opponent a 1/1 flier, but it’s probably better than giving them a 2/2 Manifest or a 3/3 Ape, so I’m content to leave Afterlife where it is rather than dig into blue removal in search of a cheaper mana cost. I’d actually rather have Path and Plow, but we’re moving on. The last six slots go to Blink-tastic permanents so we can start getting our shenanigans on!

The first five are things that act as removal or generate a resource in combination with Brago – I’d cut your token-making creatures because I thought the tokens that they made were too small, but Security Blockade blinks to make a 2/2 and even has a marginally useful ability itself, though not one I’d expect to see come up very often. Traveler’s Cloak serves two purposes: it makes Brago unblockable so you can connect for those precious triggers, and it’s a permanent that blinks to draw a card – so it contributes to the plan at the same time as it grants that evasion, making it much easier to justify than a card like Aqueous Form that is perhaps “cleaner” in its dedication to an unblockable commander.

Then there’s Reality Acid – the trigger comes from the leaves-play part of the Blink effect, not the enters-the-battlefield side we’re otherwise looking for – and Exclusion Ritual + Act of Authority to exile problems every time we get a Blink. The last card isn’t directly related to the Blink “tricks” that we’re used to seeing with Brago and it is a staple Commander “good stuff” card, but here we’re putting it into an entirely new context. Cathars’ Crusade makes your creatures bigger for each creature that comes down after the Crusade itself does; with Brago blinking your team, everyone gets bigger for every creature you blink, and it doesn’t matter that we don’t get to keep the extra counters by re-using the effect, blinking five creatures and getting five triggers is more than worth it even if we lose the two or three counters they may have had before. It’s already solid in a creature-heavy Commander deck, but in this particular deck it is even more powerful.

That brings us to the creatures – five slots have to disappear in order to make room for more lands, but we’d cut 22 creatures total because we want to cut twos and threes in order to cast more expensive creature drops, so we still have seventeen slots to play with.

The Creatures

Three of those seventeen slots will go to normal creatures, but the other fourteen will be things that like it when Brago blinks them. Let’s start with the normal critters first:

While I suppose you could blink Angel of the Dire Hour with Brago, I suspect you are not going to want to. She’s there as an instant-speed mass removal spell to be deployed even faster than a Sunblast Angel could be, and is one of my absolute favorite recent additions to the Commander format because of the power of exile stapled onto your removal spells. Thassa is here to provide us with another way to get Brago across unblocked, but the scry is relevant (and is all that Darksteel Pendant we’d cut had been doing anyway!) and sometimes you’ll get an indestructible 5/5 to attack with as well. Aetherling is here more for aesthetic than because it’s on-theme – I saw both Windreaver and Morphling and thought I should continue the trend by means of the most recent addition to the cycle. That it happens to be an incredibly potent finisher that can kill even the most dedicated control mage in this format is not to be overlooked, however. Morphling and Windreaver hit hard but they still die to Wraths; there are not a lot of things that kill an Aetherling when you have untapped mana.

Now onto the juicy Blink targets…

Solemn Simulacrum is obviously a strong Commander staple, and obviously it’s better when you Blink it. Knight of the White Orchid can do a pretty passable impersonation while we’re at it, and Vedalken Plotter can be used in a variety of interesting ways – it can break up powerful land combos like Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth + Cabal Coffers, it can trade for opposing bouncelands in order to act as a ramp card or otherwise remove the threat of powerful utility lands that might make life difficult. It’s also funny to trade a just-used Thawing Glaciers since it will still return to your hand at end of turn, but there’s nothing wrong with giving an opponent a basic land if you’re blinking the Plotter turn after turn.

Blade Splicer and Master Splicer blink to generate 3/3 Golems, much better than the 1/1 token generators we’d cut previously. Twilight Shepherd is a bit harder to explain in this way – Blinking it doesn’t necessarily do much besides bring back any attackers that may have died in combat, and just keeping them back for Brago to blink would have been better than chump-attacking with them to get the Shepherd’s trigger on the blink. Here the Shepherd is more like mass removal protection – and it’s protection that Brago can reset turn after turn, as a blinked Twilight Shepherd will come back without the -1/-1 counter from Persist. Instead of generating tokens in a direct and obvious way or getting back resources off of Brago’s blink, the Shepherd protects the team in those awkward other times in between your turns when people try to do bad stuff to you.

Card advantage is great, but card advantage you can Blink? That’s even better. Slithermuse is a leaves-play trigger rather than an enters-the-battlefield trigger, but Brago handles both in one smooth motion so it’s a distinction without a difference here. While it requires an opponent with more cards in their hand than you have, that’s not necessarily a difficult condition to reach in Commander – this is the format of twenty-card hands thanks to Reliquary Tower and crazy cards like Consecrated Sphinx after all. Diluvian Primordial offers card advantage in the form of free spells right now, and that is a juicy effect to get even just the once – if you can Blink it then so much the better. I wouldn’t be surprised if you just won the first time, but the option is there and it does synergize with the rest of the build.

And here we have the sweet Blinkable removal suite – Angel of Finality prevents recursion by exiling a full graveyard’s worth of cards at a time, and Brago helps make sure you don’t have to budget that effect carefully by letting you just access it turn after turn. Cloudchaser Kestrel handles enchantments and Nevermaker handles “whatever,” using the same Evoke-style trigger to get that Time Ebb effect we’d cut turn after turn on the blink. (Just don’t lock an opponent out with it, that’d be rather counter to the spirit of the Commander format.) Scourge of Fleets isn’t quite a Wrath effect but it is incredibly powerful and pleasantly one-sided, leaving your army in play to fight on a suddenly quite empty board. We might as well put all of those basic Islands to work, right?

The last two removal creatures exile problem creatures so that you never face them again; Luminate Primordial can get one from each opponent turn after turn with Brago online, and Phyrexian Ingester gains the offending creature’s stats as a power and toughness bonus so you can beat down hard while you eat the opposing team for lunch. (We could add Duplicant too, but not without going over our budget unfortunately.)

Putting it all together, we have the following:

Commander: Brago, King Eternal

Sean McKeown

Test deck on 11-30--0001

Commander

Creatures (36)

• 1 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Clone
• 1 Morphling
• 1 Sawtooth Loon
• 1 Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant
• 1 Vedalken Plotter
• 1 Windreaver
• 1 Cloudchaser Kestrel
• 1 Whitemane Lion
• 1 Mistmeadow Witch
• 1 Galepowder Mage
• 1 Nevermaker
• 1 Slithermuse
• 1 Twilight Shepherd
• 1 Knight of the White Orchid
• 1 Kor Cartographer
• 1 Pilgrim's Eye
• 1 Augury Owl
• 1 Sunblast Angel
• 1 Blade Splicer
• 1 Master Splicer
• 1 Phyrexian Ingester
• 1 Sphinx of Uthuun
• 1 Fiend Hunter
• 1 Archaeomancer
• 1 Lyev Skyknight
• 1 Diluvian Primordial
• 1 Luminate Primordial
• 1 Aetherling
• 1 Thassa, God of the Sea
• 1 Angel of Finality
• 1 Scourge of Fleets
• 1 Mercurial Pretender
• 1 Angel of the Dire Hour
• 1 Separatist Voidmage
• 1 Whirler Rogue

Planeswalkers (1)

• 1 Venser, the Sojourner

Lands (37)

• 11 Plains
• 1 Thawing Glaciers
• 15 Island
• 1 Skycloud Expanse
• 1 Flood Plain
• 1 Winding Canyons
• 1 Azorius Chancery
• 1 Mystic Gate
• 1 Sejiri Refuge
• 1 Mystifying Maze
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Azorius Guildgate
• 1 Myriad Landscape

Spells (25)

• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Forbid
• 1 Arcane Denial
• 1 Whispersilk Cloak
• 1 Oblation
• 1 Afterlife
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Cloud Cover
• 1 Traveler's Cloak
• 1 Angelic Shield
• 1 Vanish into Memory
• 1 Reality Acid
• 1 Crib Swap
• 1 Steel of the Godhead
• 1 Deprive
• 1 Crystal Ball
• 1 Spine of Ish Sah
• 1 Ichor Wellspring
• 1 Exclusion Ritual
• 1 Mycosynth Wellspring
• 1 Cathars' Crusade
• 1 Conjurer's Closet
• 1 Vessel of Endless Rest
• 1 Security Blockade
• 1 Act of Authority

As always, for participating in this week’s edition of Dear Azami you will receive a $20 coupon to the StarCityGames Online Store; that plus your maximum budget of $30 let me suggest up to $50 in changes in order to improve the deck – and we’ve come out under budget at just $44.43. So you can upgrade the deck for just $25 – right in the middle of your targeted range despite the fact that we swapped out nearly half of the deck.

Pricing things out on a card-by-card basis, here’s where that budget went:

Here is hoping that Vicki likes the changes, and that she can give you a thorough beating with these improvements to her Brago deck – there will still be plenty of chaos and shenanigans, but also now enough power to win and enough consistency to stay in the fight even when the opponents aren’t leaving her alone. There are certainly more than enough giggle-worthy cards to keep the table excited and/or bewildered – when’s the last time someone’s cast Reality Acid on you? How often does Nevermaker get its chance to shine? Frankly – you guessed it – never!

And just a reminder to anyone who might have skimmed past the header above to get to the Commander content: with Cassidy having to step down from Dear Azami due to real life ramping up its requirements on his time and attention, we have a writer slot to fill again here and are hoping to hear from you if you think you have what it takes to help readers like Eric and his friend Vicki to have a more enjoyable Commander experience. The qualification for “offering advice” is that someone thinks you say savvy-enough things to listen to you, and if you’ve built your own Commander decks for a while you might have what it takes to help others rebuild their decks here on Dear Azami. So send us an email at dearazami AT gmail.com to let us know why you might be a good fit and we’ll see where things go from there!

Want to submit a deck for consideration to Dear Azami? We’re always accepting deck submissions to consider for use in a future article. Only one deck submission will be chosen per article, but being selected for the next edition of Dear Azami includes not just deck advice but also a $20 coupon to StarCityGames.com!

Like what you’ve seen? Feel free to explore more of Dear Azami here, in the Article Archives! And feel free to check Jess’s own Command of Etiquette column on Hipsters of the Coast, for more Commander and casual content. Now on Thursdays! Follow Cassidy on GeneralDamageControl.com – a blog focused on Commander content and put together by a team of Commander die-hards dedicated to “Defending The Social Contract”!