#soultender

[quarkmaster]

Ravos, Soultender

Card illustration for Magic: The Gathering Commander 2016 ©Wizards of the Coast LLC

Zezhou Chen

[commander-of-the-week]

Commander of the Week

Political Partners: Ludevic Necro-Alchemist and Ravos, Soultender 

This is a strange one. I have suddenly become interesting in using some of the less abundant mechanics of the conspiracy sets, such as Vote and Goad,  to build a deck. It’s probably not going to work, but I thought about using esper for the best voting cards and then adding red to get access to donation mechanics and cards with Goad to build a political themed deck. Unfortunately the only combination that made sense was these two for the commanders. We don’t really need double strike and we won’t be using that many artifacts which takes the boros partners out of the picture. Azorius has only Ishai to offer which doesn’t help us much either. Whereas Ludevic gives them incentive to attack others which is one thing we want and Ravos gets us any creatures we may need back. 

Here, Take This

This is basically a Zedruu deck, with voting, if you haven’t noticed already. So it will have many of the things such a deck would have. Creatures such as Djinn of Infinite Deceits, Akroan Horse, Drooling Ogre and Steel Golem, Donation spells such as Harmless Offering and then other permanents that donate or exchange control of things such as Conjured Currency and Avarice Totem.

Sleeper Agents 

For some reason the thought of donating a creature to another player and then having it beat up someone else really appeals to me. For this Zedruu, the Greathearted among other donation or exchange effects have a strong presence in this deck. As well as enchantments such as Vow of Duty, Lust for War and similar effects to prevent your creatures coming back at you or at least punishing your opponents for doing so. Creatures with Goad such as Grenzo, Havoc Raiser and Jeering Homunculus could also be funny to divert attention away from you.  

Everyone has the right to vote (except for Red)

I was surprised to find that there aren’t many voting cards and if some of the best ones weren’t in black this would be just a straight up Zedruu deck. Black gives you access to voting cards such as Capital Punishment, Bite of the Black Rose and Tyrant’s Choice as well as Grudge Keeper which makes voting more interesting. Red doesn’t have cards with vote, unsurprisingly, I don’t think red care who’s in power. Blue and white both have ways to make voting more interesting with Ballot Broker, Brago’s Representative and Illusion of Choice not to mention Expropriate the most powerful of all the voting cards. 

It’s good to be King (Or Queen) 

 Despite giving away potentially everything you own, people are still going to be coming for you, so you’re going to have to stay outta the way. Especially when you start gaining life and make them lose life for having these permanents with Sanguine Bond. Why not use some of my personal favorites? Sphere of Safety, Propaganda, Norn’s Annex and Ghostly Prison as well as Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs and Windborn Muse to make attacking you suddenly very expensive. White has a few fog abilities too, but that’s up to you. 

And Finally... 

I’m not sure how this deck wins, it just seemed really fun to me at the time, maybe stack all the votes in your favor then Expropriate to cause all the other players to just give up, that would be funny. Anyway, Contested War Zone and Vedalken Plotter are very good ways of donating lands to other players. Since this is four color maybe an Expedition Map, Ravnica Two-Color lands and as many lands that produce any color as possible (Command Tower, Exotic Orchard, City of Brass, Mana Confluence. etc). I do hope you find this both helpful and fun and until next time, Happy Deck Building.