The Guide To Yasova Dragonclaw

Lots of extensive guides exist for competitive format decks, so why not Commander? The great Sheldon Menery fixes this by providing you with an extensive analysis of one of his Commander Celebration decks for Grand Prix Atlanta!

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The Threat of Yasova, which I created back in January (or, in other, non-hyperbolic Magic terms, one jillion years ago), has quickly become one of my pet
decks. Since it’s one of the crew I’m bringing to GP Atlanta for the Commander 2015 celebration, I thought I’d give you some insights on what the
deck does, how it does, and how you might go in a different direction building it. The first step is giving you the latest version.

The Threat of Yasova
Sheldon Menery
Test deck on 11-30--0001
Commander
Magic Arena

Creatures (29)

Planeswalkers (1)

Lands (38)

Spells (31)

Magic Card Back


Why Play It?

In short, it’s fun. It creates different kinds of situations than normal games. It uses the combat phase, but it uses it in a slightly different way. It’s
a battling version of “You Did This to Yourself” without permanently stealing things, which tends to get people a little salty. They’re far more
accommodating if you just borrow them. Although it’s a build-around commander, it’s in a great color scheme, which gives you a great deal of flexibility in
how you’re going to leverage the commander’s ability.

You’ll Like This Deck If…

You like getting into the red zone with other peoples’ creatures.

You like creating additional combat steps.

You like borrowing things and then being disingenuous about whether or not you’ll be giving them back.

You need to justify an excuse to play another Temur deck. (“I swear I don’t have a problem; I can give up Temur any time I want. Let me play Riku just one
more time. Sweet, sweet Riku.”)

You enjoy playing the political game.

You Won’t Like This Deck If…

You want your battles to be straightforward.

You prefer a great deal of board control.

You would rather steal things instead of temporarily appropriating them.

You think white and black are the best colors in Commander.

You want a deck with a super-tight mana curve.

You dislike multiplayer politics.

You’re not a fan of creatures.

What Does It Do?

The plan for the deck is to cast Yasova at first opportunity. There isn’t too much ramp, so that’s likely to be Turn 3. After that, it gets into combat and
borrows things for value. There are a few ways to bump up the power of Yasova (like Sword of Fire and Ice and Sword of Light and Shadow) so that she can
Threaten ever-larger creatures. You have to be careful in those early to mid turns with deciding on paying for Yasova’s combat trigger or further
developing your board. Generally, it’s the second one unless using the former accomplishes the latter.

Once you have a sufficient amount of mana, your flexibility goes up. Now you can start both using Yasova’s ability and using one of your other
Threaten spells or creatures. Because Yasova has good power to mana cost ratio, you can start battling with her right away, even if you’re not leveraging
her ability. You will get a surprising number of commander damage kills with the deck because you’ve battled with Yasova once or twice straight up, then
buffed her up and gotten in a big hit courtesy of Xenagos, God of Revels. Note that you can’t use Xenagos’ ability to Threaten a bigger creature than you
otherwise might. Yasova’s trigger condition has to be valid when you put it on the stack (so natively, the creature must have power 3 or less), meaning you
can’t get it to double with Xenagos then borrow the bigger thing.

The explosive power of the deck comes through generating an extra combat step, especially if you have the aforementioned Xenagos going. On the second step,
Yasova will be huge enough to Threaten nearly anything on the battlefield. I’ve gotten multiple kills on the same turn by Yasova commander damage on one
player and just normal damage on someone else after Threatening someone else’s monster. Savage Beating is perhaps the most accurately-named card in Magic,
because that’s exactly what it delivers. Despite my general dislike for them, there is an infinite combo in the deck with Hellkite Charger and Bear Umbra.
Because the deck gets mana-hungry, Bear Umbra was a nice choice; when I realized after the fact that the combo was there, I put Bear Umbra on my list of
cards to potentially swap out when new sets come along. It’s likely to come up few enough times between now and whenever that I don’t really worry about
it.

Cheekiest Cards

Conjurer’s Closet: Most of the time, people play Conjurer’s Closet in order to take advantage of enters-the-battlefield triggers. This deck uses it to turn
temporary control effects into permanent ones.

Erhnam Djinn: During your upkeep, give a creature forestwalk. During your combat step, borrow it. Somebody else is surely playing Forests.

Willbreaker: Yasova’s ability triggers no matter what, meaning you target something even if you’re not going to pay for it. Willbreaker means you don’t
have to (actually, you can’t, since Yasova’s ability will be countered on resolution due to an illegal target). Sure, it doesn’t have haste, but you have
it until Willbreaker leaves the battlefield (or you sacrifice it to one of your cool outlets, like Birthing Pod). Willbreaker gets even cheekier with cards
like the previously-mentioned Erhnam Djinn, Forgestoker Dragon, Kessig Wolf Run, and Nin, the Pain Artist. It creates a weird double-control effect with
Keiga, the Tide Star, since Keiga doesn’t specify that the creature is one that an opponent controls. It’s unlikely to actually have any impact since
Keiga’s isn’t a duration effect.

What Doesn’t It Do?

The deck doesn’t hide its tricks particularly well. If you’re going to sacrifice the creature you borrow, other players will see that coming. Sure, you
might have Momentous Fall or Fling in hand, but for the most part, it’s Goblin Bombardment, Greater Good, Perilous Forays, and Shivan Harvest.

The deck does not deal with opponents’ graveyards particularly well. Because it doesn’t leverage its own graveyard, a card like Mnemonic Nexus will provide
a little help, but this is one of those decks in which I’ve chosen to pretty much ignore everyone else’s graveyard and pay attention just to the
battlefield. The primary hope for controlling a graveyard comes in borrowing something with a colorless activation cost (like Withered Wretch) and doing
some damage. I’m here to tell that hope in both life and Magic is not a particularly good plan.

Even though it has Birthing Pod, it doesn’t have a well-defined Pod chain. Obviously, the card is simply good even without a plan, but there’s no real
design for what to get next.

There are few board control cards, Cyclonic Rift being the lone sweeper. When you can only have one, might as well have the best. Again, the deck is
super-focused on the offense, so the number of defensive cards is minimal.

How Does It Lose?

The deck’s primary defense is playing offense and then using one of its sacrifice outlets to get rid of troublesome creatures so that they can’t attack
you. It has difficulty handling creature swarms. Despite my harping on the idea repeatedly, the deck has no Fog effects. Without any real control elements
and only a minimal amount of artifact and enchantment removal (Nullmage Advocate and Woodfall Primus being the big hitters), the deck is at the mercy of
what others are doing. The main plan for dealing with artifacts and enchantments (other than killing the player) is hope that someone else takes care of
it-and we’ve already talked about the value of hope as a plan.

The problem with having board control in the form of mass creature destruction is that means there will not be creatures for you to borrow. I suppose that
if you could keep only your creatures alive, it wouldn’t matter which ones they are, but that’s not really a viable plan.

The deck will also lose if you have to recast Yasova too many times. To run any of its interesting engines, the deck needs mana. If you’re spending all
your mana casting Yasova (whose ability triggers if you cast her before combat, even if she doesn’t have haste), then you’re not doing too much else. While
the deck isn’t completely reliant on the commander, she is a major part of the plan. It can function without her, but at a significantly diminished
capacity.

Then, of course, there is Homeward Path, which will ruin your day. Shivan Harvest, Avalanche Riders, and Tectonic Edge are all there to take care of it,
but it’s going to be a rough ride.

With no counterspells or disruption, you’re pretty much a sitting duck to dedicated combo decks. The plan there is to just shrug and go onto the next game.

Cards That Aren’t There

Edric, Spymaster of Trest: seems like it would be a good addition. I have an unreasonable dislike of actively giving my opponents cards, though. Sure, it’s
a bit of defense in a not-particularly-defensive deck, since people will most likely be attacking in other directions, but I always see the downside in
providing everyone else with free card draws. Unless I’m playing Multani, Maro Sorcerer. In this deck, it might not be bad, because if you let your
opponents get too far into the game, you’re probably sunk anyway. You could get to the business cards faster. Still, seems tricky.

Fog: As noted. That Dragonrage could probably come out for Tangle, Spore Cloud, or even Aetherize.

Perplexing Chimera: I’m considering pitching the idea to the rest of the Rules Committee that Perplexing Chimera should be required in every blue deck. The
card is that hilarious.

Surrak Dragonclaw: Yasova’s brother would be valuable in the deck, and in fact, in any Temur creature-based deck. When Khans of Tarkir came out, I
put him in Animar because he does even more work there-the trample part being the operative. I could eventually be convinced to drop him into this deck,
although he doesn’t much fit the theme, so we’d have to consider him a utility creature.

Anything from Commander 2015 (yet): There have only been a few cards officially spoiled so far, so there isn’t much to go on. There isn’t much in
the deck that would trigger the card I spoiled earlier this week, Ezuri, Claw of Progress. Of course, borrowing a creature with myriad would be kind of
saucy. I suppose we’ll have to wait for other C2015 cards to see what can come into the deck.

Yasova and the Future

Sculpting the deck for the future will likely involve overcoming some of its weaknesses. There are a few cards which aren’t great in the deck and are there
just because they’re cool. If I had to pick five cards to chop for replacements, they would be Bear Umbra, Volcanic Offering, Dragonrage, Praetor’s
Counsel, and Swiftfoot Boots. That’s nothing against those cards, but sometimes when you make improvements, you have to make hard choices. The Fog(s) which
I would chose are probably the ones that don’t let stuff untap (like Tangle and Spore Cloud), since I’m untapping them anyway with Yasova.

Alternative Builds

Yasova doesn’t suggest too many alternate builds, since it has a quite narrow, specific thing that it does. The only real different choice I see is to
build Yasova as a Voltron-style commander and try to get more commander damage kills by being able to get even bigger creatures out of the way for Yasova
to attack. There might be some room for an Opposition build, meaning you’d get double value out of whatever you steal. You could steal something smaller,
then use it to tap down the other thing in the way. Add some cards with inspired, like Arbiter of the Ideal, Daring Thief, Fellhide Spiritbinder, and
Sphinx’s Disciple, and you’re off to the races. Maybe add stuff so that people can only untap a limited number of creatures, although you then need to
provide yourself with Turnabout or somesuch.

Alternate builds of Yasova become a victim of the overwhelming number of high quality Temur commanders, such as Animar, Soul of Elements; Riku of Two
Reflections; Surrak Dragonclaw; Intet, the Dreamer; and Maelstrom Wanderer. There is a Temur commander for any of your tastes, although I suppose only
Intet lends itself toward control. Otherwise, you’ll be stretching for a reason to make Yasova your commander, like it’s a Fate Reforged clan
deck, you’re only using cards that start with Y, or everything has to have power two greater than toughness (immediate problem: Maelstrom Wanderer).

Summary

In the end, Yasova does a cool thing and does it well. It could be a good role-player in another deck. Its appeal necessarily can’t be broad, but thematic
focus sometimes makes the most interesting decks. I don’t consider this one the most powerful because of its inherent flaws, although it is way up there on
the fun list. It’s going to lose a few games in which it never really had much of a chance. It’s going to more than make up for that in being a major
factor and/or winning loads of games by being interesting. Look for it coming to a Commander Celebration near you soon.

This Week’s Deck Without Comment is Rith’s Tokens.

Rith's Tokens
Sheldon Menery
0th Place at Test deck on 01-15-2012
Commander
Magic Arena

Creatures (36)

Planeswalkers (1)

Lands (36)

Spells (27)

Magic Card Back


Check out our awesome Deck List Database for the latest versions of all my decks:

ADUN’S TOOLBOX;
ANIMAR’S SWARM;
AURELIA GOES TO WAR;
CHILDREN of a LESSER GOD;
DEMONS OF KAALIA;
EREBOS and the HALLS OF THE DEAD;
GLISSA, GLISSA;
HELIOD, GOD OF ENCHANTMENTS;
DREAMING OF INTET;
FORGE OF PURPHOROS;
KARN, BEATDOWN GOLEM;
HALLOWEEN WITH KARADOR;
KARRTHUS, WHO RAINS FIRE FROM THE SKY;
KRESH INTO THE RED ZONE;
LAVINIA BLINKS;
LAZAV, SHAPESHIFTING MASTERMIND;
ZOMBIES OF TRESSERHORN;
MELEK’S MOLTEN MIND GRIND;
MERIEKE’S ESPER CONTROL;
THE MILL-MEOPLASM;
MIMEOPLASM DO-OVER;
NATH of the VALUE LEAF;
NYLEA OF THE WOODLAND REALM;
OBZEDAT, GHOST KILLER;
PURPLE HIPPOS and MARO SORCERERS;
ZEGANA and a DICE BAG;
RITH’S TOKENS;
YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF;
RURIC THAR AND HIS BEASTLY FIGHT CLUB;
THASSA, GOD OF MERFOLK;
THE ALTAR of THRAXIMUNDAR;
TROSTANI and HER ANGELS;
THE THREAT OF YASOVA;
RUHAN DO-OVER;
KARADOR DO-OVER;
KARRTHUS 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 and is just now getting started with a new saga called “The Lost Cities of Nevinor”), ask for an invitation to the Facebook group “Sheldon Menery’s Monday Night Gamers.”