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All right, I'm just going to jump right into things this time.  No build up or anything because I am doing things a little different in this article.  You may note the change in format, but it probably won't be all that usual.  Just mixing things up a bit.

A while back when I wrote up my article about Godo I played against an Esper deck that used Lady Evangela as its Commander.  Obviously Lady Evangela isn't really someone that people tend to build around.  She is pretty defensive, but nowhere near as defensive as (Angus McKenzie).  It turned out that the deck was essentially built around Drogskol Reaver.  At the time Dark Ascension had just come out and everyone was drooling over the Reaver.  It seemed cool, right?  Card draw based on life gain seems pretty sweet, especially since no mana is required.  I liked the idea behind the deck even if I didn't agree with all the card choices and figured I would create my own version.

So what is really the idea behind the deck?  Incremental life gain, essentially.  And ideally gaining enough life to use it all to my advantage.  While Drogskol Reaver is great, you can't really use it as your Commander.  Although the Reaver does like life gain what it really likes are small triggers of life gain to go nuts with the card draw.  That means things like Soul Warden, etc.  It would also give me the opportunity to play with cards that I had always wanted to play with, like Minion of the Wastes.  At least that was the initial plan anyways.

So I actually went through my cards and looked for various life gaining abilities.  I actually managed to find a decent amount of cards that were a little different, but felt like they fit the life gain theme.  Now keep in mind that while I was looking for life gain, I wasn't looking for gaining overwhelming amounts of life.  While I thought that there might be the potential to get into the triple figures, I really didn't want to go about gaining as much life as possible.  I didn't want my life total to get so high that I would become the number one threat at the table.  Instead, I just wanted a "comfortable" amount of life such that I could pay for stuff that required life payments.  I wouldn't be playing with Boon Reflection or Beacon of Immortality, which typically lead to huge influxes of life that make people stand up and stare.  I really wanted lots of small amounts of life gain that could be somewhat useful.

There were actually just enough cards that I pulled in my initial pass through to make a deck.  As a matter of fact I put together a mana base and made a deck of it, just for giggles.  Here is that initial version:

 

As you can see just about every card in the deck can provide some sort of life gain.  There are some fun interactions, like Angelic Chorus with Phyrexian Processor:  Just put a ton of life into the Processor and get it all back!  It also has Sword of the Meek and Thopter Foundry, which seemed like a solid way to gain life.  The deck also includes Felidar Sovereign and Test of Endurance.  I wasn't really proud of adding these but it seemed like they would suit the deck.  I also purposely avoided Soul's Attendant specifically because of the "may" clause which would cause me to have to click through every trigger, unlike Soul Warden.

Since I was using a ton of enchantments and artifacts, Hanna seemed like she would be suitable.  Kuro, Pitlord is great at providing a Plague Wind effect when necessary.  And if you have more life than everyone else, Plague of Vermin can be pretty rough for opponents, and even better when you have Soul Warden or Auriok Champion in play. 

Of course this isn't really meant to be a real deck.  It was just all the interesting cards I could find put together into deck form.  It doesn't take much to look at the deck and realize that it has absolutely no removal whatsoever aside from Binding Grasp and Consuming Vapors, and doesn't pack a single tutor besides Lim-Dul's Vault.  The card draw is actually lacking as well, relying upon Well of Lost Dreams and Drogskol Reaver to do yeoman's work.  I actually built this a while ago and had it sitting around just taking up space on my hard drive expecting to mess around with it at some point.  However recently I decided to take it for a spin just to see what I could do and whether the deck may be viable. I think I didn't even realize all the problems with the deck when I started to play it. Interestingly I was pretty surprised with the results.

In this screen shot I'm at (75) life with Kuro in play, and have Test of Endurance in hand.  Since my opponents were low on cards I probably could have won just by playing my enchantment, but decided to hold off and play things out.  Although I couldn't do anything about the Baneslayers due to protection from demons, I used Kuro to wipe out the zombie menace.

All right, what do we have going on here later on in the game?

 

This was the game ending play, where I used Plague of Vermin to get myself 40-something rats and my opponents paid for a bunch as well.  After that happened, I played Righteous Cause, which basically gave me all my life back and let me win the next turn without the use of Test of Endurance or Felidar Sovereign.   Now admittedly there were somewhere around 5 or 6 board wipes during this game, from Oblivion Stone to Akroma's Vengeance, helping get rid of problem permanents that I wasn't able to deal with.  But I managed to come out on top.

Spurred on by the success of the deck, I decided to look at it more closely and try to tune it up. I knew that I had to add some mass destruction, some pinpoint destruction and some card draw as well as other answers. Unfortunately that meant getting rid of some of my toys, so that meant bye bye to Bond of Agony and Minion of the Wastes.  I also wanted to focus my deck a little bit more with how I went about gaining life.  I really liked how Baneslayer worked out in the first game, so I decided to go with a fatty theme!

 

The first thing to note is that I changed up the Commander to Halfdane.  With some bigger creatures in the deck I could make sure to get bigger targets for his ability.  I didn't think that I would need Lady Evangela's purely defensive ability any more.  I included some card draw with Windfall, Time Spiral and Mind Unbound.  Mass destruction was included with Austere Command, Wrath of God, and Damnation.  I didn't completely get rid of the token theme, but it was greatly diminished.  I added Mirror-Sigil Sergeant, because he's cool, and Grave Titan, because he's big.  And the Sword of the Meek/Thopter Foundry combo stayed in.  But really the biggest dude in here is Sphinx Sovereign, who was added just for being a fun, huge guy.

However, I wasn't really a fan of this version.  The average CMC of the deck is 4.1, which is high, even with cards like Land Tax and Oath of Lieges added to help me out.  And on top of that, there aren't even that many fatties in the deck.  So without even trying to play this version, I decided to go the opposite direction:  Tokens!

 

All right, I had to go back to Lady Evangela since there really weren't going to be as many big guys anymore.  Besides, her ability to cut down on most forms of Commander damage is helpful.  I thought that tokens would be a good route considering I am running cards like Falkenrath Noble, Soul Warden, etc.  So I added White Sun's Zenith, Army of the Damned, Alliance of Arms and Martial Coup.  There were also some fat guys that made tokens, like Oona and Myr Battlesphere.  Blood Seeker and Ajani's Pridemate seemed like cheap guys that could cause a lot of damage over the long term as well.

I actually took this version for a spin once, but I found 2 big problems it.  The first was that even though the average CMC of the deck was slightly lower than the fatty version, coming in at 3.9, I actually had more mana issues.  This is due to the fact that there were a lot of X spells in the deck.  Decree of Justice just isn't all that great when you only get 1 or 2 tokens from it.

The second issue I had with it was that there was a dearth of game changing creatures.  The deck didn't really go "all in" with the token theme, and had a few random fatties still around.  I was trying to keep the creature count a little bit high just to work with Tombstone Stairwell, which seemed like it would be a beating with the right cards out, like Vish Kal, Blood Seeker and Falkenrath Noble, but it just wasn't working out for some reason.  Being behind on mana most of the time was really the biggest problem, and the numerous X spells were the cause.

So I felt like what I should really do was combine the two decks.  Try to take the best of both worlds and put them together.

 

All right, breaking it down a little bit further.  The first thing that you should notice is that the deck doesn't pack either Test of Endurance or Felidar Sovereign.  If you really want a deck that is going to win most often, you should probably put these 2 cards in it.  I also took out the Sword/Thopter combo, as it seemed pretty mana intensive, and I was usually spending my mana elsewhere.  On top of that I wasn't playing with a whole lot of tutors, and the pieces by themselves just aren't all that exciting.

Let's cover some of the mana help.  I have the Land Tax/Scroll Rack combo in here, which is always a nice way to dig.  I also have some decent artifact mana as well, with Darksteel Ingot and Coalition Relic.  Druidic Satchel can help ramp, give tokens or give life, all of which are good for the deck.  Oath of Lieges is really the big question mark.  Yes, it really helps you keep up with a lot of the Green decks out there that like to ramp.  However, it typically helps everyone else out as well.  And if the ramp deck is playing Green, what it can do is sit back, take advantage of the Oath until it decides to play all the ramp spells and then blow up the Oath.

I also threw in Exsanguinate.  I really needed another game changing, win now card that wasn't Storm Herd.  I know it's not a favorite among players but it doesn't always "just win" if you play it.  In order to accommodate Exsanguinate, I included Cabal Coffers and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, as well as Expedition Map to help search them up.  

There isn't a whole lot of token production in here, but the stuff I have is worthwhile.  Army of the Damned and Storm Herd are pretty much instant armies.  Emeria Angel is a solid landfall creature, while Myr Battlesphere brings along an army for the ride.  Oona is a great sink for when you have Coffers going.  Darien, King of Kjeldor is great when you have Angelic Chorus out, as you get back any life you lost along with getting a bunch of tokens.  Same goes for Plague of Vermin, which I thought was really cool until someone pointed out that just about every rat deck plays the card.  And if you have Skullclamp out with most of these, you can get some serious card advantage.  Combine with Requiem Angel to go completely nuts.

Soul Foundry may seem a little bit strange, but it works great if you put something like Soul Warden, Auriok Champion or Blood Seeker under it.  If you really want to freak the table out put a Serra Ascendant under it.  Good times.

Most of the rest of the creatures either provide lifelink, or other ways to gain life.  Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter actually proved very effective as a sacrifice outlet, and as a way to kill of other creatures.  I really wanted to stick Tombstone Stairwell in the deck just to feed him, but unfortunately I just didn't have enough creatures to justify the additional enchantment.

The only other card that bears mentioning is Serra Avatar.  What I was really looking for was another game ender and the Avatar provides a really big body most of the time.  Unfortunately it lacks evasion which means that it sometimes have difficulty connecting.  But if you are packing a Warhammer, a Sword, Vault of the Archangel or even a Jitte it can be really tough to deal with.  And if your opponents happen to not have any creatures, it can be a one shot kill. 

So how do you play this deck?  Just survive and slowly accrue life.  Then use the life to your advantage when you get the right cards.  The interesting thing is that in making the deck "better" I removed a lot of incidental life gain from the deck.  This basically means that my life totals don't really get astronomically high and that I don't consistently gain a ton of life early on.  But usually I'm able to pull something out barring something screwy being in play like Confusion in the Ranks, which completely hosed me one game.

Before I get to my game report, let's look at some of the cards that I have never used in a deck before:

There are 14 cards I haven't used:  Plague of Vermin, Vindicate, Vault of the Archangel, Absorb, Army of the Damned, True Conviction, Sanguine Bond, Oath of Lieges, Soul Foundry, Vish Kal, Vampire Nighthawk, Suture Priest, Kuro, Pitlord, Drogskol Reaver and Falkenrath Noble.  Army of the Damned and Vault of the Archangel are from a recent set, as is Vish Kal (well, within the past year is fairly recent to me), so it isn't really surprising that I haven't used them before.  I really thought I was special for finding a use for Plague of Vermin, but obviously I wasn't the first guy to come up with it.  Oath of Lieges was worth experimenting with.  Absorb is a Counterspell variant, and I typically don't use Counterspells, but I thought the life gain was interesting.  I am sort of surprised I haven't used the Nighthawk, since it's a pretty decent card.  But the real card to talk about is Vindicate.

Vindicate is one of the top 5 most expensive cards on Magic Online.  It is something that not many people own and isn't often seen outside of Classic and Legacy circles.  I have owned it for a little while but have sort of avoided using it.  I didn't use it in my recent Chromium deck mainly due to the cost.  I just felt strange using a card that I think the majority of you guys won't get to use.  But I think that this deck needed the card for its ability to remove stuff in general.  I might use it in future decks as well, I don't know.  What do you guys think about it?

So for the game that I'm showcasing, I didn't win but there was a lot of back and forth, plus cards from Avacyn Restored.  As you may have noticed I didn't include any of the cards from the newest set, mainly because I hadn't gotten my paws on them.  But that didn't stop my opponents!

The players I am facing in this game are Ghave, Wrexial and Mageta.

I haven't actually played against Mageta before so I'm excited to see what he plays.  This game is an exercise in threat assessment and knowing about newer cards.  Unfortunately I screw up on both accounts.  My opening hand has 3 lands and Oath of Lieges.  I figure it's a keeper based upon going after the Ghave player.  The early turns are punctuated by my turn 2 Oath.  On turn 3 Mageta plays Mimic Vat and I get Sangromancer.  Turn 4 Mageta gets Mind's Eye and I get Baneslayer Angel, while Ghave gets a Yavimaya Elder and Wrexial plays a Dreamstone Hedron.  Mageta plays his Commander.  With the Eye, Vat and Commander, Mageta is the number 1 threat now.  Ghave is sort of scary just because he has Ghave, so I send some damage at each.  Wrexial plays his Commander, which is interesting.  Mageta does nothing.  

Here is my first real misplay.  I send my Baneslayer against Mageta, and he goes to use his Commander's ability.  I should have just kept pounding Ghave or Wrexial and got the damage in while I could have.  Luckily I have Sangromancer in play with Skullclamp attached.

In response, Ghave is able to Beast Within Mageta's Commander.  I also don't want Mageta to get a Baneslayer Angel under his Mimic Vat, so I Path to Exile her.  In the end, I am up to (63) life, while drawing land from the Clamp.  I follow that up by playing Wurmcoil Engine, and equipping it with the Clamp.

That's when Ghave busts out Aura Shards and Avenger of Zendikar showing who the true threat at the table is.  The board is wiped of enchantments and artifacts, most of which are mine and Mageta's.  Luckily I still have 2 artifact wurm tokens, but I don't think they'll last long.  Wrexial plays Phage the Untouchable, which is a sweet card choice.  Mageta dumps his hand, playing Wall of Omens, Argivian Archaeologist and Karmic Guide, returning Mangara of Corondor from his graveyard.  On my turn, I Wrath of God to wipe the board.  I probably should have waited until the next turn, just in case Mageta got rid of Aura Shards with Mangara, but oh well.  I follow that up with Lady Evangela.  Unfortunately I haven't drawn any card draw at this point.

Of course, on his turn Ghave uses Necromancy to get the Avenger back into play.  Fortunately, Wrexial plays Dread Cacodemon to wipe the board.  Mageta follows that up with Devout Lightcaster, getting rid of the Cacodemon.  I play Requiem Angel and my Commander again.  Ghave goes to use Volrath's Stronghold to put the Avenger back on top of his library, but Mageta has Stonecloaker to remove it from the game.  He also has Tectonic Edge to deal with the Stronghold.  Ghave plays his Commander, and Wrexial plays his Commander.  Mageta plays Akroma and attacks Ghave, while I attack Ghave with my Angel, knocking him to (25).

This is one of those times when I wish that my Commander was a little more offensive minded.  On Ghave's turn he uses Tooth and Nail to grab Bloodgift Demon and Academy Rector.  Wrexial attacks Ghave, and tries to pull Tooth and Nail from Ghave's graveyard, but Mageta uses Stonecloaker again to remove it from the game.  Wrexial concedes in response.  Mageta casts Sun Titan to get Mimic Vat back, and attacks Ghave again.  

On my turn, I screw up again.  I was worried about Mageta's Akroma, so I didn't attack anyone.  Ghave was at (14), so if I attacked her with my Requiem Angel, I could have knocked her to (9).  Instead I just cast Soul Warden and sit back, hoping to gain some life from Ghave's token making.  On Ghave's turn he plays Stoneforge Mystic for Skullclamp and then makes saprolings to sacrifice to the Clamp.  He takes a point of damage each time he does this due to Falkenrath Noble.  He sacrifices a few creatures, going down to (9), before playing Mirari's Wake.  He then casts Path to Exile to get rid of Akroma, and uses Eternal Witness to get the Path back to his hand.  Ghave is in a solid defensive position now.

Mageta attacks Ghave with his team, but Ghave has blockers, which die.  Again, I screw up, hitting Mageta with the Falkenrath Noble extra damage.  I have nothing to play.  That's when Ghave plays Cathar's Crusade.

This enables Ghave to go nuts, able to create a ton of guys who get a bunch of counters, with the ability to create a dude for point of mana.  He makes about 25 guys by removing the counters from the guys that come into play, making his dudes that can attack huge.  He sends enough of them at Mageta to take him out despite blockers and my trying to protect him with Evangela.  Only one attacker needed to slip through, and only one did.  He also drops Vault of the Archangel on that turn, to go up to (169).  Even though I got up to over (110) due to all the tokens, I don't draw an answer, and die the next turn. 

So when it's all said and done, I think that the deck is decent and fun.  Lady Evangela herself helps avoid death by Commander damage, which is nice to have.  Unfortunately lots of times I felt like I really wanted a Commander who could beat and be threatening.  I don't know, maybe Halfdane would be decent just for the ability to be large.  But the Lady's ability actually came in handy every once in a while.

If I wanted to update the deck with cards from Avacyn Restored, I would find a way to fit in Blood Artist and Exquisite Blood.  If I really wanted to make it competitive, I would probably also add in Felidar Sovereign and Test of Endurance, and probably add another tutor, at least Demonic Tutor.  I know that a tutor for some card draw would have helped me in the game that I showcased.  The five cards I would take out for these would be True Conviction, Absorb, Umezawa's Jitte, and either Kuro or Rune-Tail.  But the deck did fine enough without these cards.

I hope you enjoyed the deck!  I'm going to take next week off, but I will be around the following week.  Until next time!

Leviathan, aka Tarasco on MTGO
mrmorale32 at yahoo dot com

CONQUEROR & COMMANDER ARCHIVE