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Party, Party, Party, I wanna have a Party.

I need to have a party. You better have a party!

Commodore Guff and his amazing friends, here to do a lot of things.

Planeswalkers

To the surprise of no one, a Guff deck wants to have planeswalkers. And a lot of them. And we want these planeswalkers to be doing useful things, obviously.

One of the big weaknesses of a superfriends deck is the lack of actual board presence. You could six planeswalkers, and your opponents have easy pickings having at them without some bodies to throw in the way.

Commodore Guff himself has you covered in the simplest way there, netting you a 1/1 each turn.

Elspeth, Sun's Champion, and Elspeth's Talent by extension, are the most efficient options. 3 1/1s make for a surprisingly solid defensive spread. Especially if you manage to get her emblem out. 3 1/1s are nice but 3 3/3s that fly? Delicious.

And The Eternal Wanderer gives you a 2/2 with double strike. Decent both as a defending unit and as an attacker, if you’re so inclined.

Other body producing planeswalkers (meaning ones that don’t use a + loyalty ability) are:

  • Saheeli, Sublime Artificer, nets you a 1/1 servo whenever you cast a noncreature spell. And there be plenty of those.
  • Sarkhan the Masterless, a 4/4 dragon for 3 loyalty means you’ll need to work in order to be able to use it each turn, but that dragon comes with protection for yourself and other planeswalkers, especially if you manage to get multiple of them out.
  • Teferi, Temporal Pilgrim, 2 loyalty for a 2/2 spirit. Not bad on it’s own, but then has the potential to get massive as you draw more and more cards.
  • Teyo, Geometric Tactician, 0/4 flying defender on ETB. Not the most bodies all and all, but he also comes with some solid defensive options.
  • Teyo, the Shieldmage, 0/3 wall with defender for 2 loyalty. On a planeswalker without a + loyalty. Luckily the deck has ways around this little limitation but yeah, he’ll struggle to protect you and himself consistently.
  • Vronos, Masked Inquisitor, 7 loyalty to turn your artifacts into unblockable, indestructible 9/9s with vigilance. If you manage to get this going consistently, then you’re already in a pretty solid spot.

So, it probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise that some of these planeswalkers are pretty damn expensive, with 8 of them costing 6 mana. (Well, 9 if we include Lukka, Wayward Bonder  ... but we ain’t. Because there is pretty much no instance where we want Lukka over Mila, which is a bit depressing on it’s face, but it’s what it is.)

This is another case where Commodore Guff himself contributes to this with his 1/1 wizards. Planeswalker specific mana, sure, but it counts.

Chandra, Hope's Beacon, Chandra, Legacy of Fire and Chandra, Torch of Defiance give a decent supply of mana themselves, Narset of the Ancient Way gives you a mana for a noncreature spell, and Ral Zarek can untap a land.

But again, what about those who give you mana, or a similar such thing, with a cost? Well, it’s mostly two options here:

  • Saheeli, Sublime Artificer can turn any artifact that isn’t already a mana rock into a mana rock for 2 loyalty, but like with the Shieldmage Teyo, this isn’t exactly feasible without outside ways to give her more loyalty.
  • Teferi, Temporal Archmage, 1 loyalty to untap 4 permanents. More manageable than Saheeli here.

I don’t think any deck wants to be without some card draw.

Once more, Commodore Guff contributes, though now we’ve reached the point where he does so at cost. 3 loyalty to draw as many cards as you have planewalkers on the field. (Give him Teferi's Talent, however, and it becomes loyalty neutral if you have 2 other planeswalker out, loyalty positive with 3 or more.)

If we’re talking about card draw without losing loyalty, then we have Teferi, Temporal Pilgrim, who draws a card and puts a loyalty counter on himself due to his passive, Teferi, Master of Time and The Royal Scions, who both draw then discard, Teferi, Temporal Archmage, who does a sort of draw + scry thing, Teyo, Geometric Tactician who also gives an opponent a card in the process and Chandra, Flamecaller, who does a wheel effect. Also, Chandra, Hope's Beacon and Chandra, Torch of Defiance both do a form of impulse draw but for the love of everything do not use the Hope’s Beacon one because there is not enough instants or sorceries to even remotely justify that.

Okay, so what about the planewalkers who lose loyalty to get those sweet, sweet cards? Well we got:

  • Chandra, Legacy of Fire, 0 loyalty, technically, to remove counters and impulse draw for each counter removed.
  • Jace, Architect of Thought, 2 loyalty for a minor fact or fiction effect.
  • Narset of the Ancient Way, 2 loyalty for a draw, with some damage if you’re willing to discard a nonland.
  • Will, Scholar of Frost  , 3 loyalty to draw 2. Honestly there’s enough card draw that most of the time you’d want his sister side for the damage but… hey, it’s here.
  • Teferi, Time Raveler, 3 loyalty to bounce something and draw 1. Decent enough, but you can do some interesting things with the bounce effect, with a bit of clever thinking.
  • Will Kenrith, 2 loyalty to draw 2. Quite good on it’s own, but then you also get a discount on your planewalkers until your next turn.

A deck is going to want to win somehow and you ain’t likely to win through throwing creatures at your opponents. (Well, kinda. Not creatures you’ve cast at least.) For the record, this is focusing explicitly on player damage. Damaging creatures is gonna be covered by ‘Removal’.

And again, Commodore Guff fits in. 3 loyalty, everyone takes damage enough to the number of planeswalkers you got. Boom.

As far as the loyalty positive/neutral damage goes, we got Chandra, Acolyte of Flame, who can throw 2 1/1s at the enemy that then get sacced on end step, Chandra, Awakened Inferno, who gives everyone else and emblem that deals 1 damage to them on upkeep, Chandra, Flamecaller who does what Acolyte Chandra does but 3/1s and exiled at end, Chandra, Legacy of Fire, who deals Guff’s damage on your endstep as a passive, Chandra, Torch of Defiance, who deals 2 damage if you decide against playing the impulse draw card (to the surprise of no one, Chandra does a lot of burning.), Rowan, Scholar of Sparks   deals 1 damage or 3 if you’ve drawn at least 3 cards to each opponent and Sarkhan the Masterless turns your planeswalkers into flying 4/4s.

And now for the loyalty negative. Strap in folks, this is gonna be wild:

  • Chandra, Hope's Beacon, Oh hey, another Chandra. X loyalty to deal X damage to 2 targets. Nice and scalable.
  • Chandra, Torch of Defiance, 7 loyalty for an emblem that deals 5 damage to a target whenever you cast a spell. Spicy.
  • Narset of the Ancient Way, 6 loyalty for an emblem that deals 2 damage to a target whenever you cast a noncreature spell. Not quite as spicy, but decent all the same.
  • Ral Zarek, 2 loyalty for 3 damage. Simple, but effective.
  • The Royal Scions, 8 loyalty to draw 4 cards then deal damage to any target equal to the number of cards in hand. That’s at least 4, with one hell of a ceiling (theoretically 99, but that’s a case where you somehow have 4 in the library and have put every other card in your deck into your hand. Doubt **that** will ever happen.)

Body making aside, we want ways to keep our planeswalkers safe. So, how do we do this?

Well, the most outright “Keep this planeswalker safe” option is Vronos, Masked Inquisitor, who phases out other planeswalkers, but beyond that, the best bet is to try and blow everyone’s board up where you can.

Now, one such planeswalker we have is The Eternal Wanderer, and even that’s not a complete “boom” so much as a “I’ma just tuck you away down here for a bit.”

Oh, almost forgot about Will Kenrith, +2 to reduce opponents to vanilla 0/3s. Do this on someone’s commander and you’ll easily disrupt a battle plan… and paint a target on your back so… be careful there.

And now as a quick update, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon is the removal king in this deck. +2 for 3 damage (DANG), and -X to boardwipe, oh my.

But you all know the drill by now. Let’s look at the ones who do this sort of thing at a cost:

  • Ajani Steadfast, 7 loyalty to reduce damage any source would do to you or a planeswalker to 1. Good for making the big things less of a threat.
  • Chandra, Awakened Inferno, 3 loyalty to deal 3 damage to all non-elementals and X loyalty to deal X damage to a creature or planeswalker. She’s literally the only planeswalker here who does nothing but hurt things and I love her for it.
  • Chandra, Flamecaller, X loyalty to deal X damage to each creature. Boardwipe, baby.
  • Chandra, Hope's Beacon, X loyalty to deal X damage to two targets. What is it with Chandra and -X damage abilities?
  • Chandra, Torch of Defiance, 3 loyalty for 4 damage, and 7 loyalty for her emblem.
  • Elspeth, Sun's Champion, 3 loyalty to blow up everything with power 4 or more. Decent boardwipe, bit useless against go wide decks.
  • Narset of the Ancient Way, 2 loyalty to discard a card and deal damage equal to mana value to a creature or planeswalker, and 6 for her emblem. Complete sidenote, isn’t it kinda funny how most of the time Narset is more viable as a creature than she is as a planewalker?
  • Ral Zerek, 2 loyalty for 3 damage. Decent, simple, effective.
  • Rowan Kenrith, 2 loyalty to deal 3 damage to all tapped creatures a target opponent controls… Huh… I might cook up a Izzet goad deck at some point.
  • Sarkhan the Masterless, causes Dragons you control to passively deal 1 damage to each creature that tries to attack you or planeswalkers you control. Technically loyalty neutral, but his 3 loyalty ability is the only source of dragons in the deck.
  • Teferi, Master of Time, 3 loyalty to phase out a thing. And can be done at instant speed. Not bad, but it’ll drain that loyalty quick if you find yourself on the defensive.
  • Teferi, Temporal Pilgrim, 12 loyalty to put all but 1 thing from an opponent's board into their library. Very nice. Also expensive.
  • Teferi, Time Raveler, 3 loyalty to bounce a creature, artifact or enchantment, and you get to draw a card for your trouble. The funny thing here is how political you can make it.
  • Teyo, Geometric Tactician, 2 loyalty for a Pramikon effect. Only particularly useful in political situations or when you’re not particularly threatened by someone to your immediate left or right.
  • Vronos, Masked Inquisitor, oh hey, he’s back. 2 loyalty to bounce a nonland permanent for each opponent.

This section is pretty short, all and all. Basically, we want our planeswalkers to have more loyalty. Obviously, because most of them need it to do anything.

Say it with me folks. Commodore Guff does this again. 1 loyalty on a target planeswalker you control on your end step. It’s not much, but it goes a surprisingly long way.

The other two are Chandra, Acolyte of Flame, who has a 0 loyalty ability that is basically “profilate for red planeswalkers” and Ajani Steadfast, 2 loyalty to add a loyalty to each other planeswalker (and a +1/+1 counter to each creature. Pretty nice.)

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