Long Feng, Grand SecretariatLong Feng, Grand Secretariat | Art by Robin Har

Welcome to our deck tech featuring one of Avatar: The Last Airbender's prominent antagonists. Long Feng served as advisor to Earth King Kuei and had a long history of manipulative tactics designed to capture and maintain control. Eventually, he would be exposed for his lies by Aang and imprisoned by Kuei for treason.

In the Magic set honoring the Avatar universe, Long Feng is represented in the card Long Feng, Grand SecretariatLong Feng, Grand Secretariat. In this article, we'll turn Long Feng into an engine for land and creature destruction.

What Does Long Feng, Grand Secretariat Do?

Long Feng is a 2/3 Human Advisor that puts a +1/+1 counter on a creature you control whenever a creature or land you control is put into your graveyard from the battlefield.

This ability is similar in spirit to cards like Mazirek, Kraul Death PriestMazirek, Kraul Death Priest and other black and green cards. Where Long Feng differs from Mazirek, however, is that Mazirek forces cards to be sacrificed to trigger, where Long Feng only cares that they leave the battlefield and hit the graveyard. This allows destroying creatures or lands to trigger Long Feng, including from combat damage, having zero toughness, and destruction or other wrath effects like DamnationDamnation or MurderMurder.

This deck leverages both of Long Feng's trigger points to massively boost creatures, and to overall overwhelm your opponents. An obvious step here is to sacrifice and/or destroy many creatures and lands to trigger Long Feng as often as possible. From here, we can create more objects to sacrifice, or regain those objects and sacrifice them again.

Finally, we need some cards to end the game with and make use of those sweet counters Long Feng will place upon them.

Long Feng's Noble Army

Long Feng enjoys seeing both creatures and lands perishing, and this deck provides great opportunities for Feng to spectate both. The main source of land destruction comes from fetchlands, including Verdant CatacombsVerdant Catacombs and Fabled PassageFabled Passage. These lands give an additional land drop, fetches specific lands needed at the time, and gives a Long Feng trigger as well.

The deck also includes Sylvan SafekeeperSylvan Safekeeper as another way to both sacrifice lands and protect creatures from removal by giving them shroud, all while giving more Long Feng triggers as an added bonus.

This deck's main purpose is dealing with creature recursion and making creature tokens. We can leverage several native Magic mechanics to help make recursion easier.

One such mechanic is persist, which returns a creature to the battlefield with a -1/-1 counter on it when it dies if it had no -1/-1 counters. Creatures like Putrid GoblinPutrid Goblin and Puppeteer CliquePuppeteer Clique allow us to return them and get a Long Feng trigger.

Notably, the -1/-1 counter can be removed by Long Feng placing a +1/+1 counter on the persist creature, allowing us to sacrifice the creature again.

We can also use cards that can return themselves to the battlefield, such as Ebondeath, DracolichEbondeath, Dracolich and Cult ConscriptCult Conscript. We can use mana, especially from cards like Pitiless PlundererPitiless Plunderer, to recur these creatures repeatedly for extra Long Feng triggers.

Inside the deck, we also run many cards that take advantage of +1/+1 counters. This includes Walking BallistaWalking Ballista, Kami of Whispered HopesKami of Whispered Hopes, and Evolution WitnessEvolution Witness, among others.

Another series of cards Long Feng loves include Scurry OakScurry Oak, Herd BalothHerd Baloth, and Basking BroodscaleBasking Broodscale. Long Feng can put a counter on these creatures, which will make a creature token. That token can then be sacrificed to trigger Long Feng again. In the case of Basking Broodscale, this creates an infinite two-card combo, as the Eldrazi Spawn tokens can sacrifice themselves without the need of a sacrifice outlet.

We can also use Umbral Collar ZealotUmbral Collar Zealot or Altar of DementiaAltar of Dementia to sacrifice creatures readily and for other effects.

Finally, we want to run many cards to achieve our goals easier. Pitiless PlundererPitiless Plunderer can generate mana as creatures die, making it easier to cast our spells and return creatures. The deck also includes lots of card advantage, like TerrasymbiosisTerrasymbiosis and Moldervine ReclamationMoldervine Reclamation, to help grab cards we need to cruise to victory.

How Does Long Feng End the Game?

This deck has several tangible methods of ending the game. The main idea would be to use Zulaport CutthroatZulaport Cutthroat and similar cards, or Walking BallistaWalking Ballista to end the game, ideally by executing an infinite combo. Both of these cards end the game with the aforementioned Long Feng + Basking Broodscale combo, either by infinite death triggers or infinite colorless mana that can cast Walking Ballista.

Zulaport Cutthroat can also end the game using persist creature combos and combos with Herd Baloth or Scurry Oak. Mana can also be poured into Finale of DevastationFinale of Devastation to massively pump each creature and swing for lethal combat damage, using Champion of LambholtChampion of Lambholt to make it more reliable.

The deck contains 29 infinite combos, as identified by Commander Spellbook's Find My Combos tool. Here are some of the infinite combos we hope to achieve, as described by Commander Spellbook:

Without an infinite combo, strategies to create a massive advantage with Zulaport Cutthroat or Altar of DementiaAltar of Dementia are still viable by slowly hitting opponents time and time again, progressively milling more cards and/or costing them more life as the board state develops.

As more death triggers accumulate, Long Feng will beef up creatures, which can be accelerated by Mazirek, Kraul Death PriestMazirek, Kraul Death Priest, Bristly Bill, Spine SowerBristly Bill, Spine Sower and similar cards to create a formidable wall of creatures that could easily deal lethal combat damage.

Long Feng, Grand Secretariat Commander Deck List

Conclusion

Long Feng is a simple card that can provide a strong deck, leveraging both land and creature recursion strategies to execute infinite combos and get beefy creatures. This deck is slotted in Bracket 4 due to the multiple Game Changers and the Long Feng + Basking BroodscaleBasking Broodscale combo that could easily be executed and end the game by turn three in ideal conditions.

Being in Bracket 4 gives the deck a large competition pool, but the infinite combos and the overall synergy can make it a formidable opponent against similar decks. It's worth mentioning that this deck could be fairly easily adapted into Bracket 3 by removing Basking Broodscale and some Game Changers.

While Long Feng may not be as ideal as Mazirek, it's still a solid commander that allows for specific strategies Mazirek doesn't. For fans of both recursion and the Avatar franchise, it really is a match straight out of the Spirit World.

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