Hit Me Baby One More Time!
Oh, baby, baby… After dozens of games, I am certain that this is my strongest Level 7 Commander deck. And also my most underrated. Unless someone at the table is playing a primary Sacrifice or Posion Proliferate deck, it almost always wins. But why?
The core strategy
Most decks that rely on Isperia, Supreme Judge as a commander are, in my opinion, using the wrong strategy: They try to stop their opponents from attacking instead of encouraging them to attack. But Isperia's ability only really pays off when we are attacked. By the time our opponents understand this, it is usually too late.
So the strategy is actually quickly explained: get Isperia on the field as quickly as possible, protect her, attack every turn (to get her tapped), deal commander damage, get attacked, gain a bunch of new cards, fend off the attack. Win by commander damage (this is why some cards in this deck give her permanently +1/+1, so we only need to attack three times).
For this reason, this deck plays almost no creatures and mainly instants. The cards drawn must be ready to use immediately.
The beginning of the game
Isperia costs us six mana to get her onto the battlefield and she gets more expensive every time she is removed from the field. That's why we need a lot of mana — also to be able to play enough instants later when we're attacked. Gilded Lotus, Talisman of Progress etc. help us here. But at some point we have enough mana and would perhaps prefer to draw cards to get more suitable answers. That's why many ramp artifacts can be sacrificed for cards (Mind Stone, Hedron Archive, etc.). Luck is in our favor if we draw As Foretold early enough, because we can play a free cheap response every single turn.
You might think that we should also play a lot of lands, because we want to be able to produce at least six mana quickly. But lands have a disadvantage: If we draw them while defending, they usually don't help us. That's why we also play lands like Azorius Chancery or Guildless Commons, because with Bounce lands we have another land in our hand to play next turn. And Cycling lands like Lonely Sandbar are perfect in the late game when we don’t need lands but counterspells or fog effects. Cards like Sejiri Shelter
help us to have either mana or tools at hand in any situation.
If Isperia is on the battlefield and survives the first round, we've almost won (It's best to keep some mana for a Loran's Escape, Otherworldly Journey or similar — you can use the latter against enemy creatures as well!).
Always draw the right card
Both at the beginning of the game and in the middle, it's important that we always have a suitable card in our hand. At the beginning, we want to draw lands and ramp artifacts. Later on, we mainly want to draw removals, damage prevention and counterspells. That's why we increasingly rely on instants like Silundi Vision
, Impulse or e.g. Tolarian Winds etc. (Trust me, in the beginning I didn't play any of these cards in my deck and lost some games because I simply didn't draw any lands or drew too many lands when I didn't need them). Mission Briefing has also helped me in many games, because we can use it perfectly in the late game to get the perfect tool we need out of our graveyard.
We need to get Isperia out and save her until our next turn. It doesn't matter how much damage we receive until then, as long as we don't go down to 0. Often Isperia doesn’t look that dangerous to new opponents…
Encouraging the opponent to attack
“You don't have a blocker, so my creatures are coming for you now,” is something we hear very often. Unsuspectingly, our opponents attack us... Especially when the annoying Grand Arbiter Augustin IV is on the field, they get triggered. And that's only because Isperia previously attacked the player who played so many creatures. Oh, how rash we were...
Let the fun begin
Isperia is (tapped) on the battlefield and we have mana available? Then it's going to be fun. Lots of zombies and elves attacking us? Then we'll be happy about a massive card draw and respond with a Holy Day or Ethereal Haze, for example. It's just a huge clunker and we're being attacked by a 20/20 creature? Pfff, swallow my Snap, Destroy Evil or whatever card draw gets us. THE STRENGTH OF YOUR OPPONENTS CREATURES DOESN’T MATTER!
Which cards will be dangerous to us?
There are some cards and strategies that can be dangerous to Isperia. However, this is usually only relevant at the end of the game or in one of the later games: as soon as our opponents have understood why we always win.
Creatures are usually not a threat to us. It doesn't matter how big they are — that's why we always ask “How many?” when our opponent attacks us and not “How much?” ;-)
In principle, anything can end up on the table except the following:
And if dangerous spells are played?
Destroy permanents with Generous Gift, Oblation or Stroke of Midnight, for example. Or bounce them with Select for Inspection or Echoing Truth(oops, this also makes entire token armies vanish into thin air). Many of our cards are multifunctional, such as Dawn Charm, Make Your Move or Valorous Stance etc..
We protect our commander in advance with Hyena Umbra or in between with Take Up the Shield.
Sometimes there's just too much on the table. Then spells like Promise of Loyalty help us.
Or we just counter for all we're worth! Since decks that are designed for sacrifice or poison counters usually play a lot of these card types, they have to be the first to disappear from the table with commander damage.
Have fun and maybe leave me an upvote! :-)
