Aminatou, Permission Granted

Commander / EDH Combo WUB (Esper)

Dischord

Land (35)

• 1x Arcane Sanctum
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Castle Vantress
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Drowned Catacomb
• 1x Evolving Wilds
• 1x Fetid Pools
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Ghost Quarter
• 1x Glacial Fortress
• 1x Godless Shrine
• 1x Hallowed Fountain
• 1x Irrigated Farmland
• 7x Island
• 1x Isolated Chapel
• 1x Mystic Sanctuary
• 4x Plains
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Prairie Stream
• 1x Sunken Hollow
• 1x Swamp
• 1x Temple of Deceit
• 1x Temple of Enlightenment
• 1x Temple of Silence
• 1x Terramorphic Expanse
• 1x Watery Grave

Removal (6)

• 1x Act of Authority
• 1x Anguished Unmaking
• 1x Chain of Vapor
• 1x Murderous Cut
• 1x Reality Shift
• 1x Swords to Plowshares

Recursion (3)

• 1x Archaeomancer
• 1x Command the Dreadhorde
• 1x Mission Briefing

Card Draw (17)

• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Compulsive Research
• 1x Dig Through Time
• 1x Gitaxian Probe
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Necropotence
• 1x Notion Thief
• 1x Oath of Jace
• 1x Phyrexian Arena
• 1x Ponder
• 1x Portent
• 1x Preordain
• 1x Rhystic Study
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Thirst for Knowledge
• 1x Treasure Cruise
• 1x Windfall

Ramp (9)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Azorius Signet
• 1x Dimir Signet
• 1x Orzhov Signet
• 1x Smothering Tithe
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Talisman of Dominance
• 1x Talisman of Hierarchy
• 1x Talisman of Progress

Combo (5)

• 1x Altar of the Brood
• 1x Corpse Knight
• 1x Felidar Guardian
• 1x Oath of Teferi
• 1x Spark Double

Stall (2)

• 1x Ashiok, Dream Render
• 1x Narset, Parter of Veils

Commander (1)

Counterspells (11)

• 1x Arcane Denial
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Dispel
• 1x Dovin's Veto
• 1x Flusterstorm
• 1x Mental Misstep
• 1x Muddle the Mixture
• 1x Narset's Reversal
• 1x Silence
• 1x Spell Pierce
• 1x Swan Song

Tutors (7)

• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Lim-Dul's Vault
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Scheming Symmetry
• 1x Spellseeker
• 1x Trinket Mage
• 1x Wishclaw Talisman

Board Wipes (4)

• 1x Hour of Revelation
• 1x Merciless Eviction
• 1x Supreme Verdict
• 1x Terminus

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Introduction

Aminatou, the Fateshifter is a super sweet Esper commander. All of her abilities are relevant, and she only costs to cast! There are a ton of ways to build her, from Miracles, to Flicker/Blink, to Superfriends - but I stuck with the tried and true Felidar Guardian + Aminatou combo.

This deck is a hard control/permission deck. There aren't many stax pieces here, just board wipes, removal, and card draw. Lots and lots of card draw.

How does it work?

Aminatou, the Fateshifter's -1 ability is the cornerstone of how the deck plays. Not only does it combo off with a lot of the cards in the deck, but you can also flicker a land to get an additional mana that you might not have gotten otherwise.

This deck currently runs 10 counterspells and 1 copy of Silence, effectively 11 counterspells. To recur the countermagic, the deck also runs Archaeomancer and Mystic Sanctuary in case of emergency, although it's usually better just to recur tutors/creature recursion.

The main game plan of this deck is to windmill slam Aminatou on turn 3, then start chugging through the deck until you have Felidar Guardian/Spark Double and Altar of the Brood in hand, or Corpse Knight if you're going the Felidar Guardian route. With Aminatou on board, this creates an infinite combo of ETBs that kill the table.

Permission - Counterspells, Removal, Stall, Board Wipes

As stated earlier, this deck is running 11 effective counterspells. It's also running 8 removal spells and 4 board wipes. With all permission decks, you typically don't want to burn all of your countermagic too early. You want to use countermagic on cards that give your opponents incrementally large amounts of advantage over you in particular.

For removal, we're running a pretty basic suite of removal. The coolest removal card in the deck is Hostage Taker, which can be flickered with Aminatou, the Fateshifter to steal 2 artifacts the turn you play it.

In addition to removal and counterspells, we're running a few cards to stall out until we get to our win condition. This is the stall category. War of the Spark gave Aminatou a ton of options to stall out the game. Ashiok, Dream Render is the premier graveyard hate, and can wipe out entire combo pieces out of our opponents' graveyards. Narset, Parter of Veils drastically reduces the power of our opponents' card draw, and, combined with our Windfall, can put people out of the game almost instantly. Teferi, Time Raveler returns from 60-card constructed formats with a vengeance, this time protecting our combo as we go off while allowing our sorceries to be used at instant speed.

Notably, all of the planeswalkers in the deck can get their loyalty counters and turn use reset if you use Aminatou's -1 ability on the planeswalkers. This allows for more flexibility, more digging, and more loyalty counters for your opponents to knock off.

Finally, we have 4 board wipes. An interesting interaction is with Aminatou's +1 ability and Terminus - you can put Terminus on top of your deck, then draw on a different turn and cast it for its miracle cost. It's worth keeping in mind!

Permission decks are the hardest decks to play in all of EDH. You have to be paying attention to every single spell that gets cast, and how it interacts with the table. It takes a lot of practice to figure it out, but once you do, it feels really nice to outplay your opponents by countering their most important spells or removing their biggest threats.

Card Draw, Tutors

We're playing 13 card draw spells and 7 tutors. Our main objective is to dig to the combo pieces, so we put in a ton of card draw to get to our tutors or combo pieces quickly.

I'll only go over the cards that don't see much play, and don't really have a clear reason why they are run in the deck.

Oath of Jace can be flickered with Aminatou, the Fateshifter's -1 ability to dig 6 cards deep. On top of that, if Aminatou survives until the next turn, we can scry 1 card! We can scry even more if we have other planeswalkers on the battlefield. The discard isn't too big of a loss - we have recursion to get back important cards that ended up in the bin.

Wishclaw Talisman is a brand new Throne of Eldraine artifact that can tutor for a card, but you need to give it to another person at the table after you use it. This downside can be negated by flickering it with Aminatou, allowing you to get 2 tutors instantly for 4 mana total, if Aminatou is already on the battlefield.

Aminatou's +1 draws us a card, so Scheming Symmetry's downside doesn't matter at all if we can win that turn!

For Spellseeker, we have quite a few targets. First off, all of the 10 counterspells can be tutored into hand, including Muddle the Mixture, which can tutor Corpse Knight. Next, it can straight up tutor for Demonic Tutor, Pull from Tomorrow, Despark...wow, this card is amazing. On top of that, she works really well with Aminatou, since yadda yadda yadda flicker -1 get 2 cards to hand this card is fantastic.

Finally, Trinket Mage only has two targets in the whole deck - Sol Ring and Altar of the Brood. Most of the time, you're going to search for Altar of the Brood.

Recursion

There looks like there is only 4 recursion cards in the deck, but we're actually running 5! Island Sanctuary is also a brand new card from Throne of Eldraine and holy smokes it's good. Not only does it bring back useful instants and sorceries back as a land, but it can be flickered!

Entreat the Dead is pretty useful. You can throw it to the top of your deck with Aminatou, the Fateshifter's +1 ability to guarantee drawing the miracle cost the next time you draw. This is useful to bring back Corpse Knight and Felidar Guardian. With those two and Aminatou on the battlefield, you have got yourself an instant win.

Ending the Game

We have two main combos that end the game in similar ways.

Combo 1: Altar of the Brood

1. Cast Aminatou, the Fateshifter.
2. Cast Altar of the Brood. You can now cast either Felidar Guardian or Spark Double (entering as a copy of Aminatou).
3. Use Aminatou's -1 ability, targeting the cat or the clone.
4. Use the cat/clone's -1 ability to flicker Aminatou, resetting her planeswalker usage and loyalty counters. This also mills all opponents for 1 card.
5. Rinse and repeat until all opponents are milled.

Combo 2: Corpse Knight (Narrower, vs. Eldrazi Shuffle Titans)

1. Cast Aminatou, the Fateshifter.
2. Cast Corpse Knight, then cast Felidar Guardian.
3. Use Aminatou's -1 ability, targeting the cat.
4. Use the cat to flicker Aminatou, resetting her planeswalker usage and loyalty counters. When the cat re-enters the battlefield, all of our opponents lose 1 life.
5. Rinse and repeat until all opponents are dead.

The Corpse Knight combo requires specifically Felidar Guardian, which is why I stated it was narrow. However, it's your main win con against shufflers, so we have to run it.

Oath of Teferi can also combo with Felidar Guardian & Spark Double, letting us use Aminatou's -1 to flicker a land, then reset herself using the other piece. This gives us infinite mana, and lets us reuse infinite ETB effects from our lands or creatures, and even reuse our planeswalkers infinite times.

Conclusion

Aminatou, the Fateshifter is one of the more complex permission packages that you can build. With a ton of different options to build the deck, Aminatou is always a bag full of tricks and intricacies that even you might not be able to see as you're playing the deck.

Now go forth! Let the infinite ETB triggers come to life!

Date added	5 years
Last updated	4 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	4 - 0 Mythic Rares 42 - 0 Rares 22 - 0 Uncommons 20 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.43
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U, Manifest 2/2 C, Treasure