Courtesy DeviantArt, see notes
Modification work by hyperespace, original art by aditya777

While I’ve been interested in Friday Night Magic and standard formats since Innistrad has hit the shelves, Elder Dragon Highlander (“Commander” for you latecomers) remains perhaps my favorite variant of Magic: the Gathering. It favors creative deck construction, the gameplay is best when shared with multiple people and you can bust out big guns with confidence regardless of how old they are.

And one of the guns I’ve loaded up is pretty old indeed.

Sedris And His Puppet Friends

[mtg_card]Sedris, the Traitor King[/mtg_card] is my newest Commander. While he establishes the colors and general theme for the deck, however, he is not the primary inspiration. Oh sure, being able to plunder my graveyard is neat, but it’s really just a means to an end. The deck is stocked with discard effects, zombies to soak up damage and removal to pave the way for [mtg_card]Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker[/mtg_card]. While the nature of Bolas as the go-to Big Bad for lazy Magic writers strikes me as somewhat dubious, I do feel he’s an interesting character that’s gotten new life thanks to the planeswalker mechanic. He even got his own theme deck, opposite [mtg_card]Ajani Vengeant[/mtg_card], which is where this idea really came from.

I took elements of that deck, the Commander deck Devour for Power and the Archenemy deck Bring About the Undead Apocalypse , cherry-picking some of the best cards from each and adding a few of my own. [mtg_card]Liliana Vess[/mtg_card] was an obvious choice, and the [mtg_card]Undead Alchemist[/mtg_card] is a great compliment to the many zombies in the deck. After assembly I tried it out at my local store, and it held its own against a nasty mono-green deck and a very clever mono-black deck. I look forward to sharing it with my family.

Ghave Returns

Ah, but what to do with the spoils from Ajani’s deck? There were many things of a white & green nature in it, and my thoughts turned to my old friend [mtg_card]Ghave, Guru of Spores[/mtg_card]. He’s been on the bench for quite some time and my idea of focusing on elves didn’t really pan out. So I took the deck back to its roots of token production and counter manipulation, branching out into a few ways of gaining life and some interesting new creatures. I’m curious to see how it plays.

The Other Decks

I’ve actually removed [mtg_card]Venser, the Sojourner[/mtg_card] from my Sharuum deck because I feel he has a better place in the deck I’m constructing with [mtg_card]Numot, the Devastator[/mtg_card] as its Commander. My tentative name for it is “Numot, the Superfluous”. I plan on combining the clever tricks of my Chronomancy deck with the control aspects of Political Puppets and a few other nasty surprises. The dragon should only need to unfurl his wings if I really need help with flying threats, or some lands just have to burn.

And lingering in the shadows are a seething, ticking mass of seemingly mindless creatures. They have languished in the darkness for quite a while, now. Waiting. Each makes the others stronger, faster, more powerful, harder to kill. Just a few more, and they will be ready to wash over other Commanders in an endless tide of merciless talons and mind-bending alterations.

The Slivers are coming.