Lathiel is the captain now!

I previously did a little blog post on one of my favourite decks, a high powered dragon tribal commanded by Miirym Sentinel Wyrm. I really enjoyed writing that post and diving into the reasons why I included certain cards, so I felt like I needed to do another deck tech blog. 

The first deck that I built from scratch and that was not an upgraded precon, was a life gain/scry deck led by Trelassara Moon Dancer. It started out as just a cool idea with some random cards that I had lying around making up the 99, however over the years it has slowly been transformed into a fairly powerful deck.

When I began making the deck, I stumbled across a big downside of playing a deck revolving around life gain. It is really difficult to close out a game or have a defined win condition.

As it turns out, having the most life does not mean anything if you can’t beat your opponents into oblivion.

My deck focuses around many small increments of life gain rather than gaining life in large quantities, this is to maximise the triggers I get from my commander and it allows me to scry into which ever cards I need. That way I can react to my opponents or choose the right card round out the game. The deck relies on cards like Soul attendant, Soul Warden, Essence Warden, Auriok Champion, Authority of Consuls and Scavenging Ooze to give me as many life gain triggers as possible.

The life gain then triggers creatures like my commander, Celestial Unicorn, Ajani’s Pridemate, Voice of the bBessed, Elenda’s Hierophant and Twinblade Paladin to put as many +1/+1 counters on them. With my life total high and my creatures beefed up, I aim to round out the game with either commander damage or through swinging out with big creatures.

I can also use cards like Overwhelming Stampede to take advantage of my commanders ability to gain counters quickly. I run a lot of mana dorks and utility creatures that a normally 1/1’s. Being able to use my commanders increased power to buff them up can easily turn a 1/1 Elvish Mystic into a threatening 10/10 with trample. Triumph of the Hordes has a similar effect but can also give my creatures infect which can end games really quickly. 

Cards like Felidar Sovereign and Test of Endurance can outright win the game if I have enough life, which is fairly easy to do with this deck. However, the win condition from these cards is really telegraphed to my opponents. As the cards need to stick around until my next turn to have an effect, it gives my opponents plenty of time to band together and get rid of them. That’s where cards like Teferi’s Protection really help, keeping my board alive but also making sure my life total cannot change is key to making life gain win con cards work.

The stand out card from this deck has got to be Serra Ascendant!

As a 1/1 flyer with lifelink, it does not seem to threatening. However, it also has the additional text of, as long as you have 30 or more life, Serra Ascendant gets +5/+5 and flying. In a commander format where you start with 40 life, this card is absolutely mental. If this comes down on turn 1, then I can gain 6 life per turn and can get out of control really quickly.

Sylvan Library is also a great card as I can normally just draw three cards every turn and gain the life back before my next turn comes around.

Check out the full deck list here and let me know what you think!