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The Great Guilds Of Ravnica Commander Update

Sheldon Menery’s world class library of excellent Commander brews is growing with all the new legends and multicolor cards now available! Which other edits would you recommend to Mr. Menery?

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Sleeves will be rolled up and sleeves will be swapped. Agonizing choices
will be made. Cards we love will return to the collection. Tantalizing
dreams of what epic games might play out will materialize. All this and
more goes into updating my ever-growing suite of decks with new cards and
it will be the same with Guilds of Ravnica.

As time passes, fewer cards make it into old decks, but even though I was a
little chilly on most of Guilds of Ravnica in my review, don’t
take that as an outright condemnation of the set. It has some wonderful
cards in it, but room in those decks, even an ever-expanding suite of them,
is getting precious. These days, cards almost always must be a strict
upgrade to be considered. If not, then they must be more in line with the
deck’s theme or sub-theme than the card I’m taking out. There are very few
removals anymore which are just from the card being an underperformer. Most
often, it’s just time to do the new thing.

Unlike its original, You Did This to Yourself, the Ruhan Do-Over is about
attacking. It’s about getting Ruhan of the Fomori himself and some
medium-sized creatures going while making sure the defender has trouble
blocking. It accomplishes this by creating smaller creatures with cards
like Spirit Bonds and Assemble the Legion and then using Opposition to tap
potential defenders. Part of that whole plan is to make Ruhan, who has to
attack randomly, deadlier with cards like Arashin Foremost and Boldwyr
Intimidator. That’s where the new version of Aurelia comes in; one of the
issues with Ruhan is that there always seem to be chump blockers hanging
around. Adding +2/+0, trample, and vigilance makes said chumps irrelevant.
Aurelia’s mentor ability might occasionally buff up one of the tokens, but
starting out with two power means that’ll be tougher; unless, of course,
you use her second ability to make herself larger.

Animar loves to cast creature spells. Even from someone who loves to cast
creatures, this one has my highest count (46 if you count the commander).
While I’m moving the deck away from infinite shenanigans – Animar with a
few counters, two morphs or creatures with no colored mana in them,
Cloudstone Curio – it still wants to cast creature spells in increasing
numbers on each turn. The problem, of course, is running out of cards in
hand. Enter Beast Whisperer, which is basically half of Zendikar’s
Resurgence, and problem solved.

Until and unless Balefire Liege makes an appearance, most of Queen
Marchesa’s Knights aren’t going to get swept up in the Citywide Bust. If
need be, we can use Mirror Entity to reduce their toughness for a bit
(after combat, of course). If for some reason everyone is larger, then
we’ll use Knight Exemplar to protect them. Either way we play it, we’ll
keep battling and keep our queen as the right and just monarch that we know
she is.

One of my longest-running decks gets one of the best new cards in the set.
What Divine Visitation does is make the deck a turn or two deadlier by
upgrading those little Saprolings into beefy Angels. The color we choose on
the second pass will now be white instead of green for obvious reasons.
Those Angels will now survive the fury of Archangel Avacyn when she
transforms into Avacyn the Purifier. We don’t necessarily need Rith
triggers to get there with Angels, either. The deck has in it other
token-creators like Avenger of Zendikar (sure, you don’t get the landfall
bonus, but who cares?) and it’s not-so-secret tech Darien, King of Kjeldor.

One of three updates from Guilds of Ravnica for one of my
signature decks, Doom Whisperer’s function in the deck is pretty simple:
get creatures into the graveyard, whether that’s to make the commander
easier to cast, to set up reanimation tricks, or to fuel a giant Living
Death. It’s also a pretty big beater in a cheap package. All in all, it’s
exactly the kind of card that the deck wants in it.

Dream Eater’s function in the deck is two-fold. We can only get so many
creatures out of the way with Thraximundar’s combat triggered ability and
the other tricks in the deck. When we have situations like an opponent
having more creatures than we can currently deal with, Dream Eater changes
the math; if Sigarda, Host of Herons on the battlefield (or worse, Angel of
Jubilation), it might be the only way we can get rid of something. Surveil
4 is a minor consideration, but it will fuel two of my favorite cards in
the deck, Dawn of the Dead and Oversold Cemetery.

It’s not tricky, it’s just an indestructible 16/16. It had to go into a
deck that could easily cast it, like with Selvala, Heart of the Wilds, or
one that has Lurking Predators in it. The Yidris Rotisserie Draft Deck fits
that bill. One of the long-range plans for the deck might be to find a
nine-mana creature so that I can also Birthing Pod into it.

Izoni is cooling its jets here in the Karador deck until we get around to
sculpting a deck of its own. Especially once Doom Whisperer loads up the
graveyard, Izoni will make a pile of Insects to sacrifice to Izoni’s
ability to draw cards or to either ability of Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim, but
most significantly, the second one, which exiles nonland permanents. Izoni
might be a little expensive to cast, but as 1 of 99, it won’t be piling up
commander tax for subsequent castings, which we’ll do via Karador.

This one is a simple case of seeing if something new will perform better
than something older. The three mana you spend on Marching is the same
three mana with which you’d draw the card from Decree of Justice (has
anyone ever actually hardcast that spell?), so we’ll be getting the same
number of tokens and more if we have creatures with which we can convoke,
which we most certainly will in this token-generating deck.

One of the problems with this and other Zombie decks is that card draw is
frequently difficult to come by. I don’t mind paying a life for a card, and
since Gisa and Geralf like casting creatures from the graveyard, I don’t
mind sacrificing them so that Midnight Reaper will trigger. Obviously, we
must be careful. . .oh, who am I kidding? We’re playing Zombies. There’s no
being careful.

I’m not 100% convinced about Mnemonic Betrayal. I’m just playing it for
that one time I get to Trickbind the end of turn trigger.

It’s a 6/6 for four mana, and in this deck, I’m not really casting creature
spells anyway. It’s a Beast so it fits the theme, and it still works with
Contested Cliffs and Ravenous Baloth, so all is good.

I looked for my deck with the highest number of instants and sorceries that
cost three or more, and it’s The Mimeoplasm. There’s something about
casting Rise of the Dark Realms for three mana at the end of turn of the
opponent on my right that’s quite exciting. The idea of getting around both
mana costs and timing restrictions continues to make Omnispell Adept one of
the cards in Guilds of Ravnica which I’m most excited to play
with. The fact that it’s a pretty beefy Wizard at 3/4 doesn’t hurt.

Tajic fits the deck’s somewhat aggressive profile while making our
creatures immune to non-combat damage. the kind we find in
attack-inhibitors like Powerstone Minefield and sweepers like Chain
Reaction and Blasphemous Act. Tajic having haste helps trigger battalion
abilities like with Firemane Avenger with a bit of surprise factor.

Trostani brings friends and makes them larger. If the deck’s other addition
from Guilds of Ravnica is on the battlefield, her friends are
Angels and she still makes them larger. And if anyone has deigned to steal
your creatures, Trostani calls them home.

You doing it to yourself is all about, well, you doing it to yourself. No
one will make you attack me, after all (which makes me wonder if I should
put Avatar of Slaughter back into the deck). To be fair, sometimes I’m
going to do it to you anyway, since Chain Reaction and Blasphemous Act are
definitely in the deck.

It’s like they were making cards to put into my primary Karador deck.
Combine with Izoni, Thousand-Eyed to fill the graveyard faster and
Harvester of Souls just gets kind of silly here. I suspect there will be
quite a few times when I pay the four life to keep Underrealm Lich around,
since it does exactly what the deck wants done. To some extent, it makes
the deck a little more vulnerable to graveyard removal, but there’s a bit
of a built-in resiliency for that eventuality anyway. The deck can function
with a smaller graveyard as well, it just needs to change tactics slightly.
There will certainly be times when we just get blown out from a Bojuka Bog
or something. Such is life. We shuffle up and move on.

Venerated Loxodon is best in a deck in which +1/+1 counters matter. Sure,
it’s worth a little something in any deck, in which you basically get to
distribute five of those counters for nothing or next to nothing (plus get
a 4/4), but when the counters matter and/or you have Hardened Scales or
Doubling Season, things get even better.

This is just the list of cards which are going into my existing decks.
There are others which will go into decks that are yet-to-but built, like
an Elephant tribal or featuring some of the commanders from Guilds of Ravnica. Izoni, Thousand-Eyed is probably at the top of
the list, but I’m also drawn to the difficulty of building something
coherent with Niv-Mizzet, Parun. Doing Lazav, the Multifarous right is
probably worth some effort, as is Tajic, Legion’s Edge (I think I could
basically take the blue out of You Did This to Yourself and make it a Tajic
deck). Trostani Discordant probably has some legs, but I’d want to put her
into a blink deck instead of re-casting her a bunch of times.


What I like about the setup of Guilds of Ravnica and the upcoming Ravnica Allegiance is that we don’t have to wait until the next
set in the block comes out to build new decks with new commanders. In
previous sets, like with Ixalan, we knew that there would be more
Pirates and Dinosaurs and whatnot in Rivals of Ixalan to go with
the commanders the first set presented and perhaps even better commanders
in the same color(s). With this return to Ravnica, we know that there will
be five different guilds with five new foci so we can get to building new
decks right away. Start brewing!

Question of the Week will return after release season.


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

;

Angry, Angry Dinos

;

Animar’s Swarm

;

Borrowing Stuff at Cutlass Point

;

Ikra and Kydele

;

Karrthus, Who Rains Fire From The Sky

;

Demons of Kaalia

;

Merieke’s Esper Dragons

;

Nath of the Value Leaf

;

Queen Marchesa, Long May She Reign

;

Queen Marchesa’s Knights

;

Rith’s Tokens

;

The Mill-Meoplasm

;

The Altar of Thraximundar

;

The Threat of Yasova

;

Zombies of Tresserhorn

.

Four Color



Yidris: Money for Nothing, Cards for Free

;

Saskia Unyielding

;

Breya Reshaped

;

Yidris Rotisserie Draft Deck

.

Five-Color


Children of a Greater God

Partners




Tana and Kydele

;

Kynaios and Tiro

;

Ikra and Kydele

.


THE DO-OVER PROJECT



Adun Oakenshield Do-Over

;

Animar Do-Over

;

Glissa Do-Over

;

Karador Do-Over

;

Karador Version 3

;

Karrthus Do-Over

;

Kresh Do-Over

;

Steam-Powered Merieke

Do-Over;

Lord of Tresserhorn 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.”