Laying Down The Law

Commander is a rich, deep format and offers many things to many people. For me, it’s all about epic plays that create great stories. This past Saturday I found myself with the rare day without anything scheduled—no kids to run after, no work, no appointments, and no tournaments. I put the word out I wanted to play some epic Commander games, and Richmond didn’t disappoint: five guys met me up at Collectors Heaven and we played some epic throwdowns.

The first game was three-and-a-half hours with five people, with lots of ebbs and flows, threats and counter-threats. Troy playing The Mimeoplasm was The Big Bad for much of the time, but eventually Stephen’s Malfegor deck pulled it out.

For the second game the player mix changed a little bit, and the game went on even longer. By the end it was me and my Karador deck slugging it out with Joshua’s Zedruu the Greathearted control deck. He eventually overwhelmed my removal and stuck Zedruu for a couple turns after graciously donating two lands to me and drawing three cards a turn. Facing down an opponent with a hand stocked with control cards, it seemed like I was in a hopeless position, but Joshua was having a hard time finding win conditions and gave me a lot of time.

And then I drew Zendikar Resurgent! This is obviously a crazy powerful card for Commander, and as soon as I acquired copies of it, I peppered most of my green decks with the enchantment, but this was the first time I’d drawn it in a game with an opportunity to actually cast it. Staring down a fistful of cards and my opponent not playing anything for a couple turns, I didn’t have much hope of it resolving, but much to my surprise, it did!

Thanks to my graveyard getting nuked a couple of times during the game (and when you’re playing Karador, you gotta expect your graveyard to get nuked a couple times), I didn’t have many creatures in there I was all that interested in playing despite Karador and a Volrath’s Stronghold, but now that I had Zendikar Resurgent triggers to play with, I went to work clawing out of my hole. Joshua cleared me out a few times with sweepers and surprised me with a Gather Specimens, but eventually, thanks to Zendikar Resurgent, Karador, and Glissa, the Traitor triggers getting back key artifacts, I was able to push past the control elements and secure victory!

The two games were exhausting, long, and glorious! But I know that those kinds of games aren’t for everyone. Some Commander groups like high-powered, cut-throat, combolicious combat where games end in a hurry and you shuffle up for the next one.

When I look at Eldritch Moon‘s non-Angel white legend, Thalia, Heretic Cathar, she doesn’t strike me as the sort of card I’d want to play in the epic, long brawls like I first described above. But if I know I’m sitting down with a bunch of sharks with decks that kill quickly and out of nowhere?

Yeah, I think Thalia can lay down the law and do some good work in that sort of environment. Let’s see what we can cook up.

Locking Stuff Down

Watching Thalia’s impact with Standard, it’s easy to see how it could do some work in Commander where people love to play all their favorite nonbasic lands and not too many early creatures. A quick Thalia can really slow them down and let an aggressive deck press its early advantage even further.

A couple of cards that jumped out as being really crazy with Thalia were Crackdown and Arena of the Ancients. Arena of the Ancients with Thalia means that opposing Commanders will enter the battlefield tapped and stay tapped, though it also means that Thalia could lock herself out of attacking. I added Always Watching to the mix to sometimes get around that. Thalia plays a little more nicely with Crackdown, though any other white creatures aren’t affected by the enchantment.

Of course, the card that turns Thalia into a real Demogorgon is Winter Orb, something I never thought I’d contemplate playing in a Commander deck. Wizards of the Coast was nice enough to print a shiny new version with sweet artwork in Eternal Masters, and we can provide a little redundancy with Hokori, Dust Drinker. We can even go old-school Prison with Icy Manipulator to either lockdown the land your opponent untaps or tap the Winter Orb to untap all of our own lands during our untap step.

Thalia – and especially Winter Orb – make white’s counterspells much more effective, and making it difficult to play spells means that players will have large hands, which makes Iron Maiden a viable win condition. The fact that people love to play cards like Reliquary Tower and lots of card drawing makes Iron Maiden even better.

Artifact Mana

If we’re playing Winter Orb, we certainly want to play even more nonland sources of mana than normal, so I went pretty deep here. I’m also keeping my overall mana curve very low to the ground anyway, so a card like Aether Vial gets even better.

Mana Crypt is just an absurd card and only something I’ll play when I’m facing off against other high-powered decks, and having one in my opening hand means I’m most likely able to play Thalia on turn 1—again, absurd. I was finally able to trade for my very first Mana Crypt recently thanks to its printing in Eternal Masters and I love that artwork. The judge foil version is even nicer but I’ll go for the non-foil at half the price.

Setting Rules

If we’re already disrupting our opponents with Thalia, we might as well go all-in on setting rules, and white has plenty of cards that do just that. Grand Abolisher puts the kibosh on counterspells, Aura of Silence makes it tough for our opponents to cast artifact mana to get out from under Winter Orb, and Linvala, Keeper of Silence shuts down all the sweet activated abilities of creatures your opponents control.

Fight or Flight does a nice job of slowing down opposing attacks, and I’m especially eager to combine it with Oracle en-Vec, which could make it very tough to plan on attacking with more than one creature. I expect I’ll mostly be using Citadel Siege set to Dragons, which will also be nice combined with Oracle en-Vec as well as Crackdown and Arena of the Ancients.

Protecting the Team

Of course, your opponents aren’t going to just sit back and let you mercilessly disrupt their games, so we’ll need to protect our team from resistance. We can take a page from Legacy decks like Death and Taxes and Maverick and play Mother of Runes to protect our creatures. Devoted Caretaker costs a mana to do a similar job but can also protect our important noncreature permanents.

Eldrazi Displacer’s activated ability might be a bit expensive under a Winter Orb, but we won’t always have that around and it does a great job protecting your other creatures from targeted removal or combat damage. It also can do a fair Icy Manipulator impression on opposing blockers.

Equipment

The problem with being aggressive in Commander is that early creatures can get outclassed really quickly, even with the disruption offered by Thalia and other cards in the deck. Equipment gives us a way to upgrade our creatures along with providing a lot of utility, and white luckily provides us with a lot of creatures that do some sweet stuff specifically with Equipment.

Assuming metalcraft is achieved (which doesn’t seem unreasonable for this deck), if we have Puresteel Paladin, Leonin Shikari, and Sigarda’s Aid, we can cast Equipment at instant speed and move Equipment around at instant speed for free. The visuals for what that would like is crazy—a creature is fighting on the battlefield and suddenly a Sword of Feast and Famine comes flying in out of nowhere and lands in its hands (or claws, or…). Someone tries to cast Swords to Plowshares on it, but another creature equipped with Sword of War and Peace throws the Equipment over to that creature in response for zero mana.

Having something relatively small skulk past blockers with Skeleton Key and then suddenly get equipped by other equipment out of nowhere… yeah, I foresee some good times there!

Land Tax, Scroll Rack

To round things out I do want a source of card advantage, and the classic combination of Land Tax and Scroll Rack fits in perfectly. Winter Orb provides incentive for people to play lands every turn, so it should be easy to get a Land Tax trigger often.

Here’s what I’ve cooked up:

Thalia, Heretic Cathar

Bennie Smith

Test deck on 08-12-2016

Commander

Creatures (22)

Lands (37)

Please keep in mind: I only advocate playing this deck with other players who have high-powered, cut-throat Commander decks. I don’t want to hear stories about people taking this deck to casual games of Commander and crushing dreams and making everyone miserable! I make it a point to bring a variety of different style decks to Commander tables and asking everyone what sort of game they’re looking for, and the response (and their chosen Commanders) usually makes it obvious when I’d want to bring out Thalia, Heretic Cathar to lay down the law and make those decks suffer.

What sort of cards might I be missing here? Have any of you built Thalia, Heretic Cathar decks? What approach are you taking?

New to Commander?

If you’re just curious about the format, building your first deck, or trying to take your Commander deck up a notch, here are some handy links:

Commander Primer Part 1
(Why play Commander? Rules Overview, Picking your Commander)

Commander Primer Part 2
(Mana Requirements, Randomness, Card Advantage)

Commander Primer Part 3
(Power vs. Synergy, Griefing, Staples, Building a Doran Deck)

Commander Starter Kits 1
(kick start your allied two-color decks for $25)

Commander Starter Kits 2
(kick start your enemy two-color decks for $25)

Commander Starter Kits 3
(kick start your shard three-color decks for $25)

Commander write-ups I’ve done
(and links to decklists):

• Zurgo Bellstriker (Bellstriking Like a Boss)

• Dragonlord Ojutai (Troll Shroud)

• Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund (Dragons, Megamorphs, and Dragons)

• Dromoka, the Eternal (One Flying Bolster Basket)

• Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest (Tempests and Teapots)