About a week ago, I had a friend ask me about looking at some decklists centered on the new From the Vaults: Angels set. Awesome – I can do that! However, there are about three things of note on the request.
One: This friend has only been playing Magic for about seven months now. When my long-time sparring partners realized that I was teaching him, all there was were complaints and insults flung my way – for what reason I don’t know! 😉 Therefore he is an initiate of the Order Kill Bill, or in other words, he learned by being gifted decks created by me and then went from there.
Two: This friend is building a deck for his wife because she likes Angels and they’re pretty. What can I say? We need more female players in this game! At the same time, my wife won’t play Magic with me because she and I are uber-competitive. Playing against her is a bad thing for our relationship.
Three: Most of my friends don’t let me see their decklists for a number of reasons. Typically they have enough experience building decks they don’t really need or want my help and they also don’t want to give me forewarning.
So this was kind of cool to see where my friend’s mindset is for building a deck. I like being able to see where he’s going with his ideas and how much he’s learned. Not to mention, it’s always fun to see combos that other people come up with that I may or may not have thought of on my own.
Truthfully he gave me two deck designs and then told me that there was something about people frowning on a mono-white deck Commander deck. There’s nothing that I know of about this – to me that sounds like a challenge worthy of the Order Kill Bill – give ‘em a reason to kill me first!
We’ll start with his decklist unaltered as follows:
|
Creatures (40) 1 Gold Myr |
Spells (36) 1 Sol Ring 1 Sunlance |
Lands (40) 33 Plains Sideboard |
First things first – we’ll eliminate the sideboard. In Commander decks, you typically don’t need sideboards. Second, we’ll eliminate as many of the non-Angel critters as possible. This will be a tribal deck of the highest order – hehehe, I said Order again! Therefore, there will be no links to creatures or spells that are not Angels or make anything other than Angels in the deck.
And of course, the most important thing for a Commander deck – it will be 100 cards including the Commander!
There are a few things that popped out at me – Avacyn has to be the Commander. Also you need Aegis Angel to protect Avacyn along with something else that gives her Hexproof. Additionally, the Herald of War is probably the most ruthless card in here besides Avacyn and likely the reason he wanted to use Humans as a secondary tribe.
Pristine Angel is begging to be paired with Concerted Effort. Keeping it Pristine, you are going to want to choose Vigilance for Angelic Skirmisher and Concerted Efforts.
With all the life gain from artifacts and Lifelink, not having Well of Lost Dreams in the deck seems like a nightmarish choice.
And here’s the revised Decklist for Triple H – Heaven’s Holy Host!
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Creatures (30) |
Spells (30) 1 Sunlance |
Lands (39) 33 Plains Commander (1) |
A couple other notes on the redux:
Any instance of Exalted was removed. There is not enough here to make it worthwhile, not to mention you should have a huge host of Angels. You are going to want to attack with everything.
This deck has a high mana curve. On the other hand, it has lots of bombs and ways to gain life. Hopefully your opponents are not playing control or aggro and you should be fine for the long game.
In this deck it is about the long game. As a friend of mine just recently articulated – it’s called Kill Bill because if you let me set up, I will kill everyone – at once!
And just for the fun of it, this is a two-parter of sorts. While this started with my friend’s version of a mono-white commander, I am going to take the From the Vaults: Angels in a different direction with a Red, White and Black Commander Angel deck with lots of bounce and recursion.
Until then may your games be heavenly and your smiting be of the Holiest Order!
— Nicol Billas
Originally Published August 28, 2015 @ amusengames.ca
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