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Other People’s Decks: Charlotte Sable’s Alesha, Who Smiles At Death

A commander as versatile as Alesha, Who Smiles at Death deserves out-of-the-box choices. The deck Sheldon Menery features today, by Level 3 Magic Judge Charlotte Sable, has them in spades! So what does Reconnaissance do again…?

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I’m happy to say that I have still many friends in the Judge Program, a significant number of whom play Commander. It was, after all, the dedicated professionals in the Program who served as the format’s first evangelists, taking it back to their local game shops and groups after getting infected with it during some Pro Tour downtime back in 2004-2005. When one of those friends brews up a deck that looks like loads of fun, and especially if it’s with a commander I’ve thought about building but just haven’t gotten around to yet, I enjoy featuring it on this here very site. Today, it’s going to be Canadian Level 3 Judge Charlotte Sable’s Alesha, Who Smiles at Death.

Although she’s Canadian, Charlotte currently lives in Finland. She tells me that when she’s not doing Judge stuff or hanging out at her LGS, she spends far too much time answering rules questions on Tumblr and watching speedrunners on Twitch. We first met online in one of the mIRC Judge channels, as many of us do, before we ever met in person.

Even then, when she considered herself “just” a lowly Judge, I was impressed by her courage in telling me what she thought as opposed to what she thought I might want to hear. Good leaders always find value in people will to speak truth to power. In fact, if someone tells you that you shouldn’t listen to someone because that person hasn’t risen up the hierarchy far enough, then you know you probably do want to hear what they have to say. Good ideas come from followers just as often as they come from leaders.

Once we worked together in person at events, I was struck by Charlotte’s drive to simply be a great Judge. She’s crafted herself into a well-known and respected member of the community. If you want to catch her on social media, you can follow her on Twitter (@JqlGirl) and on Tumblr (magicjudge.tumblr.com).

First things first. Let’s take a gander at the decklist.

Alesha, Who Smiles at Death
Charlotte Sable
Test deck on 06-27-2017
Commander
Magic Arena

Creatures (35)

Planeswalkers (2)

Lands (25)

Spells (37)

Magic Card Back


I’ll let Charlotte say a few things in her own words first and then I’ll offer my take on the deck.

As a trans woman, I was immediately drawn to Alesha as a character once her story was published. I knew that I had to build a Commander deck around her.

Alesha, Who Smiles at Death is a strong and versatile commander whose deck can be built in many different ways. When I approached building the deck, I wanted to really focus it around maximizing Alesha’s reanimation ability. Almost every creature in the deck can be a target. The few exceptions are cards that really help push the deck over the top, such as Iroas, God of Victory and Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer.

Creatures

Rather than fill the deck with naturally small creatures, I went out of my way to find creatures that really punch above their weight. This means a lot of them generate static buffs to themselves or enter the battlefield with +1/+1 counters. Plenty of creatures in the latter category are artifact creatures, which led to pushing the deck towards an artifact theme, (and hence the deck name. The first build of the deck had more big, dumb artifact creatures, but over time I’ve trimmed back on the more boring members of this group and added more utility creatures. As long as I have one or two good targets for Alesha, I don’t really need more.

Graveyard Filling

The other key element to the deck: cards that allow me to fill my graveyard early, since the creatures I want to reanimate aren’t usually coming from the battlefield. I also run a few key cards that allow me to recur cards that end up in the graveyard by mistake. There are some early-game cards in this group that are real gems despite being mostly unknown in the format, such as Song of Blood.

Removal

The deck doesn’t have a lot of room for removal, so every piece of removal in the deck is as versatile as possible. All of the white and black spells are great here since they can hit any problematic nonland permanent; all of the other spells are all just efficient single-target removal.

Lands

Many people will look at the deck and cringe at the low land count. While it can lead to the occasional game where I just don’t end up doing anything, more often than not, it means that I get the six or so lands I need over the course of the game and manage to fill my hand and graveyard with more valuable cards to cast and reanimate. In terms of land selection, it’s important that as many lands as possible can produce white or black mana to fuel Alesha’s triggered ability.

Basic Strategy

A good early-game will allow me to get a couple of good targets into my graveyard early and then get Alesha onto the battlefield as soon as possible. I definitely want to start getting in damage before slower opponents can really set up for their own strategies.

I’ll admit that the first thing which raised my eyebrow about the deck is the land count, which is about 25% lower than where I start with a deck. I think my lowest-count multicolor deck has 35 or maybe 36. I’m a big fan of hitting those drops every turn in the early part of the game, especially in colors which don’t ramp well. Liberal mulligan rules might lead to dropping that count, but when it comes to being at least in the game early on, I want to be able to get there. There might be enough mana rocks in the deck to smooth out things; I’ll trust that it’s worked out well enough for Charlotte to keep it like this. I imagine if she had found that she simply wasn’t in a bunch of games due to the land situation, it would change.

My favorite thing about the deck is the use of creatures with printed powers to which Alesha’s ability applies but are much larger by the time they enter the battlefield. Longtime readers know that Duplicant is simply a favorite card of mine, and it’s quite useful when you can reanimate it a few times. A player will always get mad props from me when they include Millikin in a deck. In this one, it obviously serves to get Alesha targets into the graveyard for early reanimation. Workhorse is an amazing choice. Obviously, Alesha could just make her bones on regrowing Solemn Simulacrum all the time.

I’m additionally quite fond of the fact that there are quite a few hidden gem choices in the deck. Instead of heading down the road of staples (such as Reveillark, which seems like it would be extremely strong in this 99), Charlotte has chosen to stick to theme and include quite a few cards which I had to look up, such as Nahiri’s Machinations or the quite-spicy Pia’s Revolution. Asking if anyone wants to take three a bunch of times won’t likely get as annoying as Rhystic Study, but it will certainly kill people more quickly. In this particular deck, Grave Strength seems like it could make a creature quite large. Nighthowler does good things whether you cast it normally or with Bestow.

Speaking of hidden gems (and one that you might need to be a rules expert to even think can do cool things), Reconnaissance the unknown superstar of this deck. It is one of those cards which doesn’t look all that grand until you realize it all the things you can do with it. It effectively gives all your creatures vigilance. You can untap them during the end of combat step, after they’ve done their damage. It’s also an effective way to save your creatures from an opponent’s combat tricks or other unfavorable situations.

Remember, Alesha brings the creature in tapped and attacking; you might want what the creature does, but not necessarily have it thrown into combat (because you can only bring back creatures one at a time with Alehsa). Of course, the cool trick with Reconnaissance is to attack with Alehsa, get the trigger, and then remove her (and possibly what you reanimated) from combat so that you have no doubts about doing it all over again next turn.

I don’t have too many suggestions on cards to add, but I’ll offer up a few ideas. Given all the small artifacts that seem to be coming and going, I wonder if Disciple of the Vault might be the right call. Blood Artist might serve the same function since many of those artifacts are also creatures; a little lifegain never hurts. There’s some argument to continue along the lines of Arcbound Ravager and add some addition modular creatures for maximum benefit.

Cathars’ Crusade (another sort of staple-ish card) seems like it could be bonkers in the deck, although I think I wouldn’t want to keep up with the pile of dice it requires. Stuffy Doll always makes things awkward for someone who wants to attack with a large creature, as does Mogg Maniac. Speaking of making things awkward, Archetype of Finality is Alesha-friendly and gives the entire team Deathtouch.

Alesha does her best when she’s attacking, but I worry that as a 3/2, even with first strike, she can get easily outclassed in a Commander game. For those times when Reconnaissance isn’t around, I’d want to consider something which makes her tougher or impossible to block. One way to go about that is to make sure that everyone is attacking all the time, whether that is via Grand Melee, Avatar of Slaughter, or one of my favorites, War’s Toll, which has the additional ability of forcing opponents to make uncomfortable choices about tapping mana. Of course, they can simply choose to not attack and War’s Toll won’t do anything, so we’d have to add something like Nettling Imp to force the action.

Looking through some other red enchantments involving combat, we have wild things like Invasion Plans, which makes everyone block. I also made a note of looking at No Quarter for later. While it won’t do much in this deck, it suggests itself for quite a few other, aggressive decks—especially those featuring big creatures with trample, since the triggered ability of No Quarter destroys the blocker before it can soak up some of the damage.

Another way to improve Alesha’s chances of surviving an attack are the white creatures and spells which make opponents creatures enter the battlefield tapped: Blind Obedience (which has the added benefit of extort); Thalia, Heretic Cathar; Kismet; and Loxodon Gatekeeper all apply. White has had creatures which tap down potential blockers nearly since Magic began. Speaking of Magic’s beginnings, one of my first-ever favorite cards in the game is Veteran Bodyguard, which, you guessed it, Alesha can reanimate. Of course, the bad news is that it’s tapped—meaning it won’t protect you from much right away (unless you use the aforementioned Reconnaissance), but it will do some good in the long term.

Since it’s an artifact deck, maybe some Equipment can give Alesha a boost. There’s the always-reliable Whispersilk Cloak. Depending what you see in your local environment, Sword of Fire and Ice or Sword of Light and Shadow will make Alesha a serious threat to start dealing out commander damage kills. Darksteel Plate is a little straightforward, but thoroughly effective. Tenza, Godo’s Maul is an outside-the-box choice which applies to Alesha, since her color is most definitely red; +3/+3 and trample for just three to cast and one to equip is quite nice.

Like Charlotte mentioned, the number ways to build Alesha are legion. Her take on the build is fun, interesting, and leverages a few insider rules tricks (which now are less insider-ish than they were) in order to make compelling games. I hope it inspires you as much as it inspires me.

This Week’s Idiotic Combo

This week’s combo, courtesy of scatteredsun on the official forums, isn’t all that idiotic, but it’s kind of cool and value-riffic, not to mention easily disrupted. It involves Sun Titan, Gift of Immortality, and Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim.

Enchant Sun Titan with Gift of Immortality. Sacrifice to Ayli to gain six life. Gift of Immortality triggers. When the Sun Titan comes back, you have the option of bringing back either the Gift of Immortality (meaning nothing will happen at end of turn) or something else applicable. Then, at end of turn, Gift of Immortality returns to Sun Titan (assuming it has stayed on the battlefield).

If you want to get really techy, add Marsh Flats to the mix. Make it what you return to the battlefield with Sun Titan. The land you subsequently fetch with it will fuel another sacrifice via Ayli, since that land enters the battlefield untapped. Ayli offsets the life loss from Marsh Flats, and you basically are fetching up a new land on each player’s turn.

In honor of Alesha, this week’s Deck Without Comment is my only Mardu deck, Demons of Kaalia.

Demons of Kaalia
Sheldon Menery
0th Place at Test deck on 01-08-2014
Commander
Magic Arena

Creatures (36)

Planeswalkers (2)

Lands (36)

Spells (27)

Magic Card Back


Check out our comprehensive Deck List Database for lists of all my decks:

SIGNATURE DECKS

Purple Hippos and Maro Sorcerers; Kresh Into the Red Zone; Halloween with Karador; Dreaming of Intet; You Did This to Yourself;

THE CHROMATIC PROJECT

Mono-Color

Heliod, God of Enchantments; Thassa, God of Merfolk; Erebos and the Halls Of The Dead; Forge of Purphoros; Nylea of the Woodland Realm; Karn Evil No. 9

Guilds

Lavinia Blinks; Obzedat, Ghost Killer; Aurelia Goes to War; Trostani and Her Angels; Lazav, Shapeshifting Mastermind; Zegana and a Dice Bag; Rakdos Reimagined; Glissa, Glissa; Ruric Thar and His Beastly Fight Club; Gisa and Geralf Together Forever;

Shards and Wedges

Adun’s Toolbox; Animar’s Swarm; Karrthus, Who Rains Fire From The Sky; Demons of Kaalia; Merieke’s Esper Dragons; Nath of the Value Leaf; Rith’s Tokens; The Mill-Meoplasm; The Altar of Thraximundar; The Threat of Yasova; You Take the Crown, I’ll Take Leovold; Zombies of Tresserhorn

Four-Color

Yidris: Money for Nothing, Cards for Free; Saskia Unyielding; Breya Reshaped.

Five-Color

Children of a Greater God

Partners

Tana and Kydele

THE DO-OVER PROJECT

Animar Do-Over; Glissa Do-Over; Karador Do-Over; Karador Version 3; Karrthus Do-Over; Steam-Powered Merieke Do-Over; Mimeoplasm Do-Over; Phelddagrif Do-Over; Rith Do-Over; Ruhan Do-Over

If you’d like to follow the adventures of my Monday Night RPG group (in a campaign that’s been alive since 1987) which is just beginning the saga The Lost Cities of Nevinor, ask for an invitation to the Facebook group “Sheldon Menery’s Monday Night Gamers.”