Created as a Christmas present for a friend of mine, this deck features Gwyn, Hero of Ashvale as its commander, and tries to take advantage of her abilities and remain flavorful as a theme deck.
The objective for this deck will be primarily to utilize an altered art commander to feature Agrias Oaks Agrias Oaks instead of Syr Gwyn. Likewise, several of the characters from Final Fantasy Tactics are represented by some of the cards herein:
1.) Alicia: Syr Carah, the Bold
2.) Lavian: Adriana, Captain of the Guard
3.) Ovelia Atkasha: Fumiko the Lowblood
4.) Ramza Beoulve: Syr Alin, the Lion's Claw
5.) Delita Hyral: Aryel, Knight of Windgrace
I've currently got Fumiko the Lowblood in as Ovelia, but I'm debating whether I want to literally taunt all of my opponents' creatures by putting the Princess onto the battlefield, and into harm's way. Also, she's not actually a knight, so some of the synergy this deck wants to feature is lost. The main problem is that the copy I currently have on hand for her isn't foil (Edit: I finally got a hold of a foil copy, but not in time to alter it anyway), and I find it way easier to alter the art on foils, whereas the foil version of Fumiko is much harder to find than any of the newer cards since none of her reprints have been in foil.
I saw a picture on Reddit, I think, of Princess Ovelia putting flowers in Agrias' hair (much to the chagrin of the latter), with Ramza at the edge of the screen holding a bouquet - I thought about altering The Circle of Loyalty with my rendition of this same scene, just to see what my friend would do, but that's a bit beside the point. I think, of all the decks to include the Circle of Loyalty into, the best possible kind would be one which cares about legendary knights, and this is that deck.
The deck was originally built roughly by the 8x8 theory of deck building: "Pick 8 things you want to do, then pick roughly 8 cards which do those things, in order to go with your commander, then pick roughly 35 lands and your deck is complete." I've also looked at the Command Zone theory of deckbuilding, and it may suit the deck slightly better; I'm not sure. It isn't designed to be a competitive deck, so a lot of the cards are ending up being darling cards which I don't want to cut for flavor reasons, and the more competitive methods of playing would also feel wrong according to the spirit of the deck ( Skull Clamp, for example, is a great card but the literal opposite of the correct flavor to be running under Agrias' command). I have deviated from 8x8 with a few cards so far; I've reduced the boardwipes since I don't think having 8 boardwipes is either necessary or helpful for this deck's strategy - instead of that I think I might've added one of the best cards for this deck in the form of Bludgeon Brawl. In-case you're not familiar, it combos very well with Syr Gwyn, allowing her to equip any of your mana rocks to your knights for free, giving them +2/+2 or better a lot of the time, then letting you draw more cards when they attack, and ironically not affecting their ability to produce mana.
I'm debating the best ratio of equipment to creatures to run for this deck. On paper, it feels like I don't have enough equipment, although if I started running more equipment it would likely be in the form of equipment cards which also get me creatures along with them. I've also been debating adding more Knights Tribal synergy cards, especially Acclaimed Contender. I may drop some of the removal in favor of these cards for the final version - I've already dropped a few pieces of removal based on the reasoning that I want to focus on the aggressive strategy more than the responsive one.
I've also included a few cards simply because my friend is also a fan of Dungeons and Dragons; I've included one each of the cards which have you roll each of the different dice. These all dilute the deck a little from the refined Knights Tribal synergy, whereas one of them is an equipment and a few of them ramp mana, so it's not like they're dead cards in the decklist. If I figure I need more of both equipment and creatures, they'd be some of the next to go. I may also add some other Dungeons and Dragons cards in their place, such as Red Dragon, White Dragon, Black Dragon, and maybe a copy of Icingdeath, Frost Tyrant.
I've decided not to go with Sram, Senior Edificer since despite having equipment as one of the themes for the deck, there aren't enough equipment in this deck to make his draw ability worthwhile (expect 1 or 2 draws with Sram most games, whereas he's not a knight to go with your other theme and won't want to attack, so in most games you'd be better off replacing him with something you actually want).
Likewise, I removed Stoneforge Masterwork because, despite the fact that knights are the other theme of the deck, the expected number of other knights is usually going to be 2 or less unless you have a token generator, whereas Nettlecyst will give that as an option the majority of the time and it also gives you a creature if you need that, but it scales better with the expected number of artifacts you're going to play.
I remembered to put Cranial Plating in because it's phenomenal in a deck which runs a bunch of artifacts.
I decided to take out Adaptive Automaton, Brass Herald and Metallic Mimic for now since I have Valiant Knight, Triumphant Adventurer, and Midnight Reaper. We'll see if we need more anthems or more creatures, but as an added bonus I had these cards lying around so they were easier includes.
I've also dropped Arvad the Cursed from the list because I didn't end up running as many legendary creatures as my initial drafts would've suggested - instead I remembered to put Bruenor Battlehammer in because he can act as a pseudo-second commander to reduce equip costs but he also buffs creatures based on their equipment, and my friend is a Salvatore fan so it works especially well for this project. Although the equipment count in this deck is relatively low, I decided to keep Puresteel Paladin in since his draw ability will also trigger off of Toggo's rocks, whereas he also is a knight and his secondary ability reduces equipment costs if you can't count on your commander to do that for some reason, so he remains a useful include even if you never end up using him as a card draw engine.
I considered Golem-Skin Gauntlets, but I decided against it since there aren't actually that many equipment in the deck, and since the deck wants to equip lots of different creatures with its various equipment rather than one big creature. I briefly considered adding Nahiri, the Lithomancer, but I don't have any spare copies at the moment, and I'm not sure it would be much better than another knight most of the time.
