From The Brim To The Trim - Living The Budget And Snuffing Out Opponents
(Elenda and Azor | Art by Randy Vargas)
A Vampire And A Sphinx Walk Into A Bar...
Greetings and salutations from a currently somewhat snowy European country, and most of all, happy new year! May 2024 bring you weird combos, fantastic brews and Magic-allity at its best.
After our last brew – my, 2023 seems so far away already – I left you with the usual choice between three potential candidates. Rafiq of the Many and Drivnod, Carnage Dominus each received almost the same number of votes, respectively 65 and 66. Our big winner this time around is no other than Elenda and Azor, standing at 86 votes (40% of the total). Is it just me, or do you people enjoy lifegain more than you would ever admit?
At any rate, let's have a look at this week's contender.
There is a lot to unpack here.
First, the stats. 6/6 for three and Esper mana with flying and Ward 2 is already a very respectable body. And from here it only gets better. The first ability allows you, whenever this sparkly duo attacks, to get some potential card draw. The second one pairs up splendidly. For a puny 4 life, you get a bunch of tokens equal to the cards you've drawn this turn. And that triggers every turn, not only on yours. Sounds like a nifty synergy that could get out of hand quickly.
Before we delve into the possible strategies, we have to grab the usual stuff. Let's plug in everything that's on this commander's page, and add whatever additional cards present in the Cheap section for good measure.
And, voilà ! We've got a beefy 403 cards to start working with. Don't get your hopes up though, I get the feeling that the numbers are going to melt faster than I can say ElendAzor...
First Trim - The Cardboard Chainsaw Massacre
So, by now most of you probably skip this section, since I ramble over and over basically the same stuff. No cards above $1 must stay, yadda yadda.
Except this time, it's a bit different. You see, I've been toying around with Archidekt and I've just found out a juicy feature. If you view by Stacks and Group by Price, the site will sort the cards by price categories. This should allow anyone to quickly remove anything too expensive for their wallet in a jiffy. And what's best, by selecting a category, you can delete everything in it with a couple of clicks. Neat.
So off we go. Select the cards between $1 and $5 to find the cheapest possible printing, remove anything above $1, see what we get to work with.
Oh, and as usual, here's a rundown of the best cards under $2 you may want to consider for this build. At the time of writing, there are 36 of them. Let's see if there are any must-haves.
- Brainstorm: I'm not usually a huge fan of this without ways to shuffle your deck away, but with your commander, this is a three-card-draw for a single mana.
- Night's Whisper: This is one of my favourite draw spells in black, period. Please Wizards, reprint this into oblivion!
- Exsanguinator Cavalry: Very nice Knight that combines well with the tokens you'll produce.
- Thran Dynamo: It's hard to argue against value when your commander costs 6 already...
- Drogskol Reaver: I've been impressed by this time and again. Granted, it's 7 mana, but it's a lot of life and card draw if your opponents allow it to live.
- Whispering Madness: If you like to live on the edge, this can be a lot of fun, granting you a flurry of Soldiers every turn. Be careful though, your opponents will likely draw into a board wipe at some point.
- Invasion of New Phyrexia: In the unfortunate case your commander becomes unavailable, this is a solid token creation alternative.
- Damn: One of the best board wipes printed recently.
- Deadly Dispute: Right alongside Night's Whisper.
- Wizard Class: You're likely to have a lot of cards in hand, this helps. Also, why isn't this 20 cents?
- Shorikai, Genesis Engine: I love this robot so much that I built an entire deck with it. Solid card draw, solid token creator, and a potential beater. What's not to like?
- Elenda, the Dusk Rose: The reprint in the latest Vampire Commander precon dropped her price significantly, but alas not quite enough.
- Raffine, Scheming Seer: This one has the potential to snowball extremely fast, effectively doubling your army every turn.
All right, with all this bling removed, we're down to 230 cards. It's been a while since I've had such a scrumptious choice. On to the next part.
Second Trim - Cardward Scissorhands
All right. Now that we've got most of the kerfuffle (love that word) out the way, it's time to see what we have at hand to keep the flow running. I'm using the categories set by Archidekt, so some of these definitions may be a little stretched. Let's see:
- Draw: 51
- Ramp: 27
- Removal: 21
- Wipes: 10
It has indeed been a serious while since I've seen these categories so richly populated. So, what to do...
I'd like to keep Draw to a healthy 15-20 cards. Since our commander relies strongly on filling our hand repeatedly, we need to make sure we can do it consistently enough, despite its built-in ability.
Ramp, Removals and Wipes we'll keep in the same waters as usual. On to it.
| Draw | Ramp | Removal | Wipes |
After giving the manabase a healthy shave, we're now down to 150. Drat, that's quite a lot more than I was expecting. Looks like we have some more serious cuts to do. On we go!
Third Trim – Cutting off the Rough Edges
If there's something you can't accuse Elenda and Azor of, that's lack of ambition. There's a lot of stuff our commander wants to do. It needs a strong card draw base, but will also benefit from anything pumping Vampires and/or Knights. As such, there are a lot of support cards remaining in our list, and there are quite a few that seem superfluous or impractical.
With that said, there are also many that could very well stay in the final list. Before we go into more details, I'm making the following arbitrary choices:
- No counterspells shall remain. This is a casual deck, and I like my opponents to do their stuff as well.
- No recursion-focused spell shall survive. Don't get me wrong, I fancy necromancy, but I feel this is not quite where the deck's goal is at.
- Anything not in direct support of our army will have to go, no matter how flavourful they feel.
With these three categories, the remainder should be in line with our main strategy. I'd like to be able to either flood the board with an unstoppable army of Vampire Knights or benefit from their death by draining our opponents. Think of it as Aristocrats going wide.
| Counterspells | Recursion | Misc. |
Can you spot the intruder in the List above that escaped my attention insofar? (hint: it's a staple, way too expensive if you ask me).
Now that we're done with the obvious, there are some hard decisions to make. As it stands, anything in this list (currently at 125 cards) could make the final cut. So for once, I'll not wait until we're down to the usual 110, I'll proceed to slim down the list in the next section.
Brace yourselves, we're in for a rough ride.
Fourth Trim - Heart-Wrenching Choices
So, what do we have left?
First, there is a strong Aristocrats base still available to us. 10 cards that drain, in one way or another, our opponents. This is one category I'm reluctant to trim too much, simply because of the sheer value. This is boardwipe insurance at its best, barring the occasional Farewell, and a potential win condition to boot. I'm actually surprised Viscera Seer isn't on this page, given how well he synergizes with our strategy. I'd really, REALLY love to find some room for him here.
Second, there are a lot of Anthems, some definitely better than the other. There is some probably some wiggle room here, especially for the most expensive options.
Third, I'm seeing some Sisterly action. While on paper it looks sexy as hell, I'm not quite sure they would make the cut in the end.
Therefore, here are my final cuts, in no particular order. Again, bear in mind none of these are bad choices.
- Etchings of the Chosen: I'll stick to the two mana ratio for a +1/+1 boost with no other real advantage.
- The Circle of Loyalty: Much too expensive for the actual results.
- Markov Baron: The Convoke ability made me hesitate a lot, but in the end I decided against it. I'm probably wrong here.
- Valiant Knight: On paper it looks fine, but I'm not certain I'll have the required mana at hand to activate it on a regular basis.
- Collector's Vault: After Careful Consideration, I decided to forego this cute outlet, despite it's fairly cheap cost. It's not bad, but it's not that impactful either.
- Clavileño, First of the Blessed: The face commander or the latest Vampire precon is nice, but too slow for my taste.
- Sidar Jabari of Zhalfir: Not enough Knights to bring back, and not impactful enough card draw.
- Will, Scion of Peace: A fantastic outlet if commander, but I fear it will be a bit lackluster here. You need to hit with your army for it to really shine, and he'll be a prime target as soon as he hits the field.
- Despark, Feed the Swarm, Rite of Oblivionand Path to Exile: I think we can trim down the removal bit slightly more.
- Queza, Augur of Agonies: Not 100% convinced by her ability, since it only targets a single player.
- Soul's Attendantand Suture Priest: the Sisters will net some nice lifegain, but I'm unconvinced. I might go back to the Attendant though.
- Plains: Silly me, I had forgotten about Kabira Takedown being a land as well!
- Compulsive Research: What bothers me most is that it's a sorcery. Solid spell otherwise.
- Thirst for Discovery: I have decided against playing many basics, so this is not as effective as it could be.
- Unbreakable Formation: Until the very end I want to keep a nice protection outlet. But at this point, this is the card I want to keep the least.
- Legion Lieutenant: There are already 9 anthems in the list, I think we can make do with 8.
- Thalisse, Reverent Medium: On paper, she's effectively a token doubler. But she costs five mana, which we probably could employ making tokens by drawing cards.
- Malakir Bloodwitch: Simply too expensive.
- March of the Canonized: The last ever so painful choice. I like the token creation, but the devotion trigger feels a bit underwhelming compared with what we could do otherwise.
And there you have it. So many ways to build this commander, so many dirty tricks, so many ideas...
Conclusion
It is way past midnight, my head is spinning, but I'm glad I managed to get to the end of it.
Tell me now, what do you think of this opus? Any choices you'd like to challenge? Any gross mistake in your eyes?
Let me know in the comments, and I'll see you in two weeks!
Arnaud Gompertz
Arnaud Gompertz has been playing Magic since 4th Edition, back in 1995. He's been an assiduous EDH enthusiast since 2012, with a soft spot for unusual and casual Commanders. He'll always favour spectacular plays against a boring path to victory. Aside from mistreating cardboard, he's a dedicated board games player, loves a challenging video game and occasionally tries to sing with his choir.
Your opinions are welcome. We love hearing what you think about Magic! We ask that you are always respectful when commenting. Please keep in mind how your comments could be interpreted by others. Personal attacks on our writers or other commenters will not be tolerated. Your comments may be removed if your language could be interpreted as aggressive or disrespectful. You may also be banned from writing further comments.