(Terra, Herald of HopeTerra, Herald of Hope | Art by Marta Nael)

Hello everyone, Jonathan here! Final Fantasy has been giving us a lot of new commanders between the Standard set and the Commander precons and, most importantly, a ton of new and interesting builds to discover, tune, and experiment with. In this article, I'll be building around one of the face commanders for the preconstructed commander decks: Terra, Herald of HopeTerra, Herald of Hope.

Once we go beyond the surface of this card, we can see how it offers a new take on the small reanimator theme by changing a number of small details.

What Does Terra, Herald of HopeTerra, Herald of Hope Do?

Let's go into the details of our general, to see where the innovation resides with it. The second half of the card is the compass that helps us construct a deck around it: whenever TerraTerra deals combat damage, we can pay to reanimate a creature with power three or less. This of course leads us to build a small reanimator deck, in which we don't want to bring back from the graveyard a big haymaker, but rather we want to reuse our creatures to net value every time.

Additionally, TerraTerra can count on another ability: at the beginning of our combat steps, we mill two cards and it gains flying until the end of the turn. This helps it fuel itself and, most importantly, allows us to play less self-mill spells in the 99, freeing up more slots for other parts of our strategy.

What I particularly like about this commander is how well balanced it is. It represents a new take on a common deck theme and, while it does some things worse than other options, it can also count on upsides that help nullify those shortcomings.

Let's compare it with a similar commander in the same colors: Alesha, Who Smiles at DeathAlesha, Who Smiles at Death. The most glaring difference is that TerraTerra needs to deal damage to trigger, which is way worse than AleshaAlesha's attack requirement. At the same time, our commander can count on a better evasion keyword, since flying makes it easier to attack than first strike, although it's still not an excellent insurance against possible blockers. Both of them reanimate for two mana, even though TerraTerra's cost is slightly better, since it doesn't require any specific color. On the same line, our general allows us to bring back a creature with three power or less, which is strictly better than AleshaAlesha's two-power limitation.

Finally, what makes the greatest difference between the two is the first line of our commander's textbox. The self-mill ability means we can play TerraTerra at different stages of the game, whereas AleshaAlesha doesn't do much in the earlier moments of the game.

Going back to our current build, we're going full aggro with today's deck. In particular, we'll take advantage of the modular mechanic, as it has a double synergy with our commander. First, all of the creatures with this keyword have zero power, although they enter the battlefield with one or more +1/+1 counters. This means that, while they all fall under TerraTerra's condition for reanimation, they will all also come with more power than what's written on the card. Second, these creatures incentivize us to sacrifice them, or make them die in general, which also means they'll be available for recursion with our commander's ability while we also move the +1/+1 counters present on them onto other bodies.

Our ideal game plan involves repeatedly sacrificing and re-deploying creatures with modular, while adding to our on-board creatures' stats every time we go through these steps.

Key Cards for Terra, Herald of HopeTerra, Herald of Hope

Of course, the stars of the show are the creatures with modular, some of which shine brighter than the others.

First off, we can obviously count on Zabaz, the GlimmerwaspZabaz, the Glimmerwasp, the de facto modular commander these last few years. It's an extremely cheap creature with a lot of text, all of which is relevant in some way. It adds counters to our attackers, which means they'll grow faster and that they'll make fellow robots grow even more. Then, it can get rid of our artifacts, thus making moving counters easy and repeatable; it's also worth noting that this ability makes blocking extremely tricky for our opponents, as the stats of our attackers could change out of the blue. Lastly, it can gain flying until the end of the turn, which isn't going to be extremely relevant but it can help push some damage on our opponents.

Then, we're relying on the cornerstone of the Modern Affinity deck from back in the day: Arcbound RavagerArcbound Ravager. This creature seems so simple on the surface, but actually has an enormous impact on our board. Simply put, if sacrificing artifacts is good when paying one mana, doing it for free can only be even more absurd. Also, keep in mind that it can sacrifice itself to its ability, allowing us to both recur it with our commander and to easily spread accumulated counters.

Lastly, Arcbound ShikariArcbound Shikari is another interesting creature, especially if we keep in mind that our plan is to repeatedly bring back all of our creatures from the graveyard. Clearly it needs a pretty crowded board to do work, but if this condition is met, things could get out of hand quickly. The two additional counters it grants when dying are the icing on our modular cake.

As hinted above, another category of cards that perfectly fits within our strategy is sacrifice outlets. What's cool about them is the degree of personalization we can reach with them. Keep in mind that the ones I've included are meant to be a sample of various roles they can cover. I invite you to tune this portion of the deck according to your playstyle and/or your playgroup, so that the list can flow even more smoothly.

With this in mind, sacrificing creatures unlocks a number of card draw options, such as Corrupted ConvictionCorrupted Conviction and Village RitesVillage Rites, both of which shine for how cheap they are. Nonetheless, the true star of the show is Deadly DisputeDeadly Dispute, as it gains added flexibility for basically no additional cost. In other words, it allows us to sacrifice either a creature or some other artifact we control (which is niche, but they're still more targets than the other cards mentioned) and also refunds us of one of the mana we spent on it. Also, I'm a huge Pauper fan and this card recently got banned, so you can consider it somewhat of tribute to such a game-breaking card in 1v1.

Getting rid of our creatures also permits us to take out our opponents' stuff, with cards such as Bone ShardsBone Shards being as cheap as one mana to do so. Again, there are many sorceries that are similar to this one and that you maybe want to include in the list given your particular context of play. If your playgroup/meta runs a lot of haymaking creatures you want to make sure to answer as quickly as possible, then I suggest you consider slotting in some more of these cheap effects. If your games tend to be more on the grindy side, AttritionAttrition is an awesome include. You can sneak it into play early, let everyone forget about it because you don't need it immediately, and then start some extremely powerful loops sacrificing a creature, killing another one and bringing back yours with TerraTerra.

Lastly, we also get access to some powerful protection spells. Slobad, Goblin TinkererSlobad, Goblin Tinkerer is an oldie but a goodie, with a simple design that does only one thing, but does so perfectly. Additionaly, once more, it fits nicely within our general game plan, which makes it even better than it seems. On this same line, the newly printed Duty Beyond DeathDuty Beyond Death seems to be tailor-made for this deck, as it does all the things we want a card to do at a pretty cheap cost. Namely, it sacrifices creatures (which can both spread their counters and be reanimated), it puts +1/+1 counters on all of our board (which is quite literally our whole strategy) and it protects it from mass removals (which is our greatest weakness).

In addition to all of this, we also run a slim unblockable package. We clearly want TerraTerra to connect as much as possible and, while she's always a flying attacker, this doesn't ensure we'll be able to deal combat damage to one of our opponents. For this reason, we want some kind of way to totally prevent them from blocking, but we also want the slots dedicated to this aspect of the deck to be doing something more.

The first example is Brotherhood RegaliaBrotherhood Regalia, a treat from another Universe Beyond which grants some soft protection to our commander and makes sure no blocker gets in its way. The part where it becomes an Assassin doesn't have any relevance, but the discounted equip cost clearly does, as we can play TerraTerra and already have enough mana to put the Brotherhood RegaliaBrotherhood Regalia on it the following turn.

Then we have Key to the CityKey to the City, another treasure from the past which is definitely less flashy than the previous card but can still put in work. What's especially good about it is that it pairs a discard outlet with the ability to make our general unblockable, which in the best scenario means we discard a creature to immediately reanimate it for two mana. The draw ability clearly isn't very good due to its cost, but it's still something we can count on if we're in a desperate situation or if the game has become extremely grindy.

Last but definitely not least, Silver Shroud CostumeSilver Shroud Costume is a sweet piece of tech coming from yet another UB set. This time, the unblockable clause is tied with a protection spell, which makes the timing of this card a bit more weird than it should be. In fact, we might be inclined to play it as soon as we can to make our plan start rolling, but if we do so, we have to keep in mind we might have exposed our commander to a spot removal. All in all, this card is clearly good and does a lot of work in our deck, especially considering TerraTerra's central role in our strategy, but we totally have to be more cautious with it than with the other cards mentioned.

How Does Terra, Herald of HopeTerra, Herald of Hope Win?

What's particularly interesting about this commander is how well it can play two completely different roles, depending on the state of the game.

On one hand, we might want to play it out early and gain as much value from it as possible. Picture a scenario in which you got access to some early mana rock, you deployed some creatures and a Throne of GethThrone of Geth, or maybe you have a Cultist of the AbsoluteCultist of the Absolute in your hand. In this case, we clearly want to deploy TerraTerra soon, transforming every creature into multiple instances of modular, which also means our opponents' life totals will start decreasing pretty soon. The clear advantage of this approach is its explosivity, which feeds on the numerous internal synergies between our creatures. This plan is also somewhat resilient to spot removals, considering we can bring back creature after creature and rebuild our board like that.

Nonetheless, if the interactions start piling up (which is very possible, given that nobody likes early aggression) or we're exposed to a well-timed board wipe, then we definitely need to take multiple turns off to rebuild from scratch.

On the other hand, this deck is surprisingly good at grinding, a scenario we could reach either because of us (e.g., our draws don't align very good and we're not able to hit the board early) or after one of the mass removals mentioned before. In these cases, we want to rely on our commander as much as possible to get back all of the resources we spent during the previous turns and getting the best out of our creatures once more. More expensive cards, like Smile at DeathSmile at Death or Reunion of the HouseReunion of the House, are the ones we're more keen on playing, as they quickly have a huge impact on our board state, thus accelerating our recovery process exponentially.

Metastatic EvangelMetastatic Evangel is another piece that can get us back from the brink of defeat; it's cheap and extremely efficient, making sure that even our small creatures (whose impact is clearly minimal in the later stages of the game) can still fuel our plan and help us reconstruct from ashes.

Terra, Herald of HopeTerra, Herald of Hope Commander Decklist

Conclusion

We've reached the end of this deck tech, so it's time to draw some conclusions. All in all, TerraTerra is lining up to be an extremely fun commander that can give aggro strategies the edge even in longer games. It being able to constantly recur creatures at a reasonable price allows for an all-out aggro build without any fear of being blown out by the first board wipe cast. Nevertheless, as I've mentioned before, it's crucial to find the perfect balance between aggression and utility spells (i.e., draw effects, interactions, etc.) depending on your local meta and playgroup situation. Still, this general will always fit perfectly in whatever shell you decide to put it, since the sheer value it can generate will always be appreciated.

Now it's on to you. Did you like this deck? What changes would you make? What approach will you be following when building it? Let me know in the comments, and I'll se you next time with another deck tech!