Commander Deck Of The Week: Voja, Jaws Of The Conclave

Following in the footsteps of Kari Zev, Skyship Raider and Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, another legendary creature token has made the jump to an actual Magic: The Gathering card with Voja, Jaws of the Conclave from Murders at Karlov Manor!

While I doubt the new Voja will be menacing tournament formats like Ragavan does, I’ve played enough with Voja to know it’s definitely going to be menacing Commander tables. Its ability to draw cards and grow your team just by attacking is incredibly strong, and when I built the deck, I knew I’d only pull it out for higher-powered games of Commander.

Breaking Down Voja

Voja is a really cool design because it wants you to play both Wolf and Elf cards in your deck, without strictly being a “lord” for them with a static ability that boosts the relevant creature type. It’s a nice callback to the earlier versions of Voja that were Wolf tokens tied to the various versions of Tolsimir Wolfblood, an Elf.

Voja, Jaws of the Conclave really packs a lot of action into a five-mana creature. A 5/5 with vigilance, trample, and ward 3 is a great start, but once it attacks, things get bonkers! The attack trigger lets you put +1/+1 counters on all your creatures – whether they’re attacking or not – equal to the number of Elf creatures you control, and you draw a card for each Wolf creature you control.

That ward ability will do some work, since your opponents will have lots of incentive to kill Voja before you get to attack with it. That’s why you’ll want to give Voja haste and attack with it right away, and multiple times if you can!  Lucky for Voja, it has red in its color identity, so there are a lot of options for both haste and multiple attacks, and I’ve got some of them in my deck.

Let’s dig into my list!

Wolves

Drawing cards is the cornerstone of Magic, and having the ability attached to your commander makes it quite powerful by default, depending on the hoops you need to jump through. Voja just needs to attack, and since it’s a Wolf itself, at a minimum you’d get to draw a card. More cards are better, so I’ve added quite a few Wolf cards to the mix.

Elves and Wolves

These cards give you a two-fer, an Elf and a Wolf!  I’ve got all three versions of Tolsimir, which give us all three token versions of Voja. Turntimber Ranger gives us combo potential with Maskwood Nexus; see the Changelings section below.

Elves

I’m running fewer Elf cards since getting extra +1/+1 counters isn’t as powerful as drawing cards, but having an Elf or two on the battlefield does make your army quite threatening and quickly. I mostly picked Elf cards that had some utility like Radha, Heart of Keld and Glissa Sunseeker, or specifically benefited from getting +1/+1 counters like Incubation Druid and Gyre Sage. The lifegain potential of Arwen’s ability will be clutch in racing situations.

Changelings

Creatures with the changeling ability check both Wolf and Elf boxes, so they’re extremely valuable to the deck. I’d pick “Wolf” for Realmwalker most of the time unless you really need an extra Elf or two to grow your army big enough for an alpha strike. Chameleon Colossus is here to bring love to your mono-black opponents!  The deck certainly has vulnerabilities to flyers, so Webweaver Changeling is definitely appreciated.

Keep in mind if Maskwood Nexus is on the battlefield when you cast Turntimber Ranger, you’ll create a Wolf token that’s also an Ally, so it will trigger over and over again. Since it’s a may ability, you can decide just how many Wolf tokens you want to make, but keep in mind that each Wolf will force you to draw a card when you attack with Voja, since Voja’s trigger is not a may ability. Don’t accidentally deck yourself on your attack step!

Haste

Crashing Drawbridge and Swiftfoot Boots are excellent haste enablers for any deck, but access to red unlocks other awesome options. The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth supply two excellent haste enchantments that both come down before you’d cast your commander. Gimli’s Reckless Might is especially sweet because chances are pretty good you’ll meet the formidable threshold with Voja on the battlefield, so you can fight and clear away a blocker on your attack. You can fight any creature you don’t control, so you can even snipe a creature a different opponent controls if you want to.

Removal

There are great removal options in Naya, though I’m playing less than I’d usually run, mostly because my commander is such a card-drawing engine that it should let me draw into removal when I need to have it. I love the new Pick Your Poison for the many options, including dealing with flyers which we’ll be a bit weak to.

Card Draw

When you’ve got card draw stapled to your commander which also has ward, it makes other card drawing engines less necessary, but I still think Rishkar’s Expertise is worth a slot. Last Night Together is an extra attack option hopefully for my commander, giving it and a partner indestructible, and those two attack steps with Voja should supply a huge rush of fresh new cards.

Interaction

I made a personal vow recently to start adding Maze of Ith back into my Commander decks. It’s a cool old card that can come in clutch in defending against a large creature that might otherwise be hard to handle, and in the case of this deck it can let you attack with Voja but prevent combat damage that might otherwise kill your commander, giving you all the benefits from the attack trigger. Commander Rules Committee member Scott Larabee would be so proud of me!

Barrow-Blade is another awesome card here; equip Voja with it, and you can attack into creatures with indestructible or deathtouch or first strike and not have a care in the world. And since Voja has vigilance, it even makes an incredible blocker against those otherwise problematic creatures.

Mana Ramp

Since my commander costs five mana, I like the card advantage ramp spells of Cultivate and Kodama’s Reach, which also fix my colors along the way. I’m excited about Case of the Locked Hothouse here, since once my commander starts attacking and having me draw cards, I should be able to take advantage of the extra land drops and pretty easily solve the case—which is when things really get cooking!

Growing Rites of Itlimoc is great for digging for a changeling creature to double-dip on Voja’s attack trigger, and since I’m hoping to go at least a little wide when it transforms into Itlimoc, Cradle of the Sun. It should supply lots of extra mana to deploy the extra cards I’ve drawn from Voja.

The Deck

Okay, here’s the full decklist!

Here are the deck stats from our friends at Archidekt:

So, what other must-have cards might I have missed including here?  Do you think Voja is too powerful for your playgroup?  Which commander from Murders at Karlov Manor are you building around?

Talk to Me

Do me a solid and follow me on Twitter!  I run polls and start conversations about Commander all the time, so get in on the fun!  You can also find my LinkTree on my profile page there with links to all my content.

I’d also love it if you followed my Twitch channel TheCompleteCommander, where I do Commander, Brawl, and sometimes other Magic-related streams when I can.  If you can’t join me live, the videos are available on demand for a few weeks on Twitch, but I also upload them to my YouTube channel.  You can also find the lists for my paper decks over on Archidekt if you want to dig into how I put together my own decks and brews.  

And lastly, I just want to say: let us love each other and stay healthy and happy.