Killian, Ink DuelistKillian, Ink Duelist | Art by Ryan Pancoast

Friendly greetings and welcome! I'm John Sherwood, a Limited player with a Commander habit. Have you ever loved a Draft or Sealed deck so much you wanted to experience it again? That feeling is one reason set mechanics rate high in my deckbuilding preferences.

Repartee, the Silverquill set mechanic from Secrets of Strixhaven, is a blast in Limited. Those repartee creatures have some great payoffs for casting instants and sorceries with targets. I especially love getting bonuses for casting removal spells.

Now I'm excited to see what repartee can do with 100 cards instead of 40. Even before playing repartee in a Sealed deck, I had my eye on Killian, Ink DuelistKillian, Ink Duelist as a potential commander for this new ability.

In a manner befitting a hero of the Phyrexian Invasion, Killian already leads a respectable 3000 decks. Many of those decks are Auras decks, because Killian discounts the casting cost of the Auras. His discount also applies to the instants and sorceries that trigger repartee. However, repartee is incompatible with Auras.

Enchantress players might see repartee's limitation as a downside. I see it as an opportunity to take a previously solved Commander in a new direction.

The Secrets of Strixhaven Sealed Deck

My Secrets of Strixhaven Sealed deck will make up the bones of this Killian, Ink DuelistKillian, Ink Duelist repartee Commander deck. Unfortunately, my local game store sold out their prerelease events, so I missed out on a Silverquill-themed event kit. Instead, I bought a Draft Night box and played Sealed at home with my son. Pure kitchen table Magic, as Richard Garfield intended.

I built a deck around repartee and prepare creatures, with plenty of removal. The deck had a trim curve, a few flyers, and a high level of interaction; it was beautiful. Still, there were fewer combat tricks than I would have liked, and I blame that deficit for my resounding defeat at the hands of a prodigious pre-teen.

Cuts and Keeps

In Sealed, players build a deck of at least 40 cards from six booster packs. I listed 41 above, because I swapped FractureFracture for Owlin HistorianOwlin Historian between games. Sadly, I failed to notice Fracture doesn't target creatures until it was in my hand. I'm including it here as a cautionary tale about reading the cards before including the cards.

Fracture won't be in the final version of the Commander deck either, because Killian has better removal options at his Inkling-stained fingertips.

Additionally, a Sealed deck may include multiple copies of the same card if they came from the packs. The duplicates of DaydreamDaydream, Elite InterceptorElite Interceptor, and Forum of AmityForum of Amity need to be cut to make this a legal, singleton Commander deck.

Further subtractions include some of the deck's draft chaff. Creatures with prepare were crucial in the Limited environment, but their glory fades in a constructed setting. For example, Elite InterceptorElite Interceptor helped manage my opponent's blockers with its prepared spell Rejoinder. Meanwhile, Abigale, Poet LaureateAbigale, Poet Laureate was a serious threat in the tight, creature-heavy lists that win low power 1v1 games.

I enjoy the prepared mechanic, but it isn't the focus of this deck.

I won't convert this deck to Commander totally unprepared, though. Scathing ShadelockScathing Shadelock is a solid body with repeatable card advantage. Free access to a cheap sorcery once per round is great value, and keeping this card preserves some of the deck's Limited feel.

Recs

After trimming a little chaff out of my Sealed list, it's time to start counting up again. My next stop is EDHREC's namesake feature.

There's two great ways to do this. The old-fashioned way is to click the Recs link on the EDHREC menu bar, and paste the list. Those of us awesome enough to use Archidekt get direct access to Recs via the EDH Recs tab in Archidekt's Card search. Either way, the Recs tool produces recommendations based on the cards already in the list.

The Archidekt Card search automatically pulls Recs from EDHREC based on the cards currently in your deck.

The top five Recs are other creatures with repartee, and an instant named Killian's ConfidenceKillian's Confidence. Referencing the commander directly is an easy flavor win. Conveniently, this sorcery also targets a creature, draws a card, and comes back from the graveyard. I'm sold.

Snooping PageSnooping Page is an especially good target for Killian's Confidence. Becoming unblockable makes excellent use of the +1/+1 counter, and guarantees the combat damage to get Killian's Confidence back in hand for next turn. For very little setup, we get an engine for all our other repartee triggers. Plus we get to draw two extra cards on each repetition.

Many of the repartee creatures are trying to go tall, like Scolding AdministratorScolding Administrator and Lecturing ScornmageLecturing Scornmage. The Scolding Administrator is a signpost uncommon, and a bear with set's mechanic. It's the cardboard incarnation of everything this deck is trying to do, and I wish I'd had one in my Sealed pool.

I may have been scorned by booster pack contents, but I'm not missing out again. Menace makes this Owl a threat on developing board states. Then the latter ability, reassigning its counters, creates an opportunity to stay relevant in the mid-to-late game.

While the other Silverquill are busy getting bigger, Informed InkwrightInformed Inkwright is going wide. Those Inkling tokens will quickly flood the board and evade most blockers.

Tracing Roots

Repartee is not truly a new mechanic: it's a descendent of older mechanics. Prowess, heroic, magecraft, and valiant are all interwoven into repartee's design pedigree. Many older cards with these ability words offer solid support for a repartee deck.

Sadly, I missed Theros block during a break from Magic. When I returned to the hobby in 2018, heroic captured my imagination and my slim card budget. I love seeing the lineage of heroic in repartee, as well as a new home for Phalanx LeaderPhalanx Leader. If you read my Best Nonlegendary Creatures in Secrets of Strixhaven, then you already know about pairing Phalanx Leader with Stirring HopesingerStirring Hopesinger. Phalanx Leader is a great target, regardless of which repartee creatures are in play.

Unlike heroic, valiant did not inspire me to build any decks. I love Bloomburrow, but valiant whiffed for me. Heroic and valiant both want to be the target, so they are competing for attention. Good thing there aren't many options for valiant anyway. I like Whiskervale ForerunnerWhiskervale Forerunner in this deck as a utility to dig for better payoffs. Payoffs like these prowess and magecraft picks:

These token makers are helping the deck go even wider. Magecraft and prowess go hand-in-hand in Spellslinger decks, and their flexibility is a boon to repartee. Monastery MentorMonastery Mentor is a proven closer in any deck casting multiple noncreature spells per turn. The Pests from Sedgemoor WitchSedgemoor Witch are not as threatening as Monks with prowess, but they can pester your opponents or pad your life total.

Legendary Creatures

One more thing before we look at the finished repartee Commander deck. Or, rather, two more cards. I want to highlight two very special legendary creatures; both of which could be alternative commanders for this deck.

I'm not versed in the lore of either Assassin's Creed or Final Fantasy. I don't know anything about these characters. Is Shay CormacShay Cormac an outlaw with a sense of chivalry? Or a paladin with a criminal side hustle? Either way, the Magic spin on this Human Knight Rogue lends his blade to the plentiful creature removal. The option to nullify defensive keywords is clutch, and there will be plenty of chances to post and collect Shay Cormac's bounties.

Final Fantasy's relationship with fantasy tropes drifts between referential and subversive. For every "typical" fantasy character, there's at least one that breaks from fantasy convention. I have to suppress my Tolkien-coded concept of "Dwarf" when I look at Papalymo TotolymoPapalymo Totolymo.

If you share the same malady, do yourself a favor and take your medicine. This text box is worth it. Draining the table is a fun way to incrementally win a game. As if a built-in win condition weren't enough, Papalymo is also an edict on a stick. It's not all-in on removal like Shay Cormac, but sometimes forcing a sacrifice is all you need to sculpt a better board state.

Killian, Ink Duelist Commander Deck List

Conclusion

Whether or not you experienced Silverquill in Limited play, I'm confident this Killian, Ink DuelistKillian, Ink Duelist deck will be a blast in Commander. Commander decks are often forced to choose between interaction or building value engines. This deck does both, and does it in style with a repertoire of repartee and its precursor mechanics.

What else would you add to this deck? What would you cut? Have you ever converted a Limited deck to Commander? I'd love to talk about it in the comments.