Arahbo + Kaheera (budget commander)

Commander / EDH GW (Selesnya) Kaheera, the Orphanguard

golgarigirl

Land (34)

• 1x Animal Sanctuary
• 1x Arctic Treeline
• 1x Blighted Woodland
• 1x Bonders' Enclave
• 1x Bretagard Stronghold
• 1x Buried Ruin
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Evolving Wilds
• 1x Field of Ruin
• 5x Forest
• 1x Fortified Village
• 1x Grasslands
• 1x Krosan Verge
• 1x Mosswort Bridge
• 1x Myriad Landscape
• 1x Path of Ancestry
• 8x Plains
• 1x Rogue's Passage
• 1x Sunpetal Grove
• 1x Temple of Plenty
• 1x Temple of the False God
• 1x Terramorphic Expanse
• 1x Unclaimed Territory

Removal (10)

• 1x Beast Within
• 1x Condemn
• 1x Declaration in Stone
• 1x Divine Reckoning
• 1x Generous Gift
• 1x Khalni Ambush  ^Flip
• 1x Shatter the Sky
• 1x Soul Snare
• 1x Swords to Plowshares
• 1x Valorous Stance

Hard-Hitting Kitties (15)

• 1x Adorned Pouncer
• 1x Armored Skyhunter
• 1x Bloodline Pretender
• 1x Bronzehide Lion
• 1x Chameleon Colossus
• 1x Charmed Stray
• 1x Fleecemane Lion
• 1x Leonin Skyhunter
• 1x Leonin Warleader
• 1x Maned Serval
• 1x Pride Sovereign
• 1x Sacred Cat
• 1x Skyhunter Patrol
• 1x Skyhunter Prowler
• 1x Skyhunter Skirmisher

Supportive Kitties (13)

• 1x Feline Sovereign
• 1x Fleetfoot Panther
• 1x King of the Pride
• 1x Lion Sash
• 1x Masked Vandal
• 1x Mirror Entity
• 1x Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith
• 1x Oreskos Explorer
• 1x Pridemalkin
• 1x Qasali Pridemage
• 1x Realmwalker
• 1x Regal Caracal
• 1x Watchers of the Dead

Other (8)

• 1x Belt of Giant Strength
• 1x Dragon Throne of Tarkir
• 1x Duelist's Heritage
• 1x Felidar Retreat
• 1x Forebear's Blade
• 1x Sejiri Shelter  ^Flip
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots
• 1x Trailblazer's Boots

Commander (1)

Companion (1)

Advantage (11)

• 1x Heirloom Blade
• 1x Hunter's Insight
• 1x Hunter's Prowess
• 1x Lifecrafter's Bestiary
• 1x Open the Armory
• 1x Path of Discovery
• 1x Quest for the Holy Relic
• 1x Remember the Fallen
• 1x Return of the Wildspeaker
• 1x Spectral Steel
• 1x Zephyr Boots

Ramp (8)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Farseek
• 1x Liquimetal Torque
• 1x Mind Stone
• 1x Rampant Growth
• 1x Selesnya Signet
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x You Happen on a Glade

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Sideboard

Other (1)

• 1x Kaheera, the Orphanguard

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Yet another edition of my budget thrown-together-on-the-cheap decks with primers.

Core ideas:

• Kitties are quick- Your cats will be the largest creatures in combat for the first few turns of the game. Make sure you push your advantage!
• Take advantage of how buff your kitties are- There are a lot of cards in your deck that you will want to use either DURING or AFTER combat when one of your kitties has +3/+3. Note that Arahbo's ability happens regardless of if you attack or not, it just triggers at the start of combat.

Category Breakdowns:

Advantage

Advantage, or Card Advantage is your deck's momentum or velocity...it's how well it keeps moving forward in a game. Most often this is done by drawing cards! Green notoriously does this via big creatures, and white often has to co-opt this from artifacts. The options in this deck include cards like Hunter's Insight which rely on big creatures...which is ideal for this deck because Arahbo pumps things at the Combat Phase. Some artifacts like Zephyr Boots, which are equipment, can also help your kitties hit in combat. Be aware that a lot of our card draw is tied to combat! I also consider tutors and recursion a form of Advantage, as we are finding or re-using specific cards for a given situation. The best thing to do is to have some idea of what you may need and if your library or graveyard has that thing before using these. Quest for the Holy Relic allows us to find the exact right equipment for what is happening on the board from your library, and Remember the Fallen will buy back the correct kitty and maybe artifact too for whatever situation we find ourselves in.

Upgrade Examples Sword of Fire and Ice, Guardian Project, Eladamri's Call, Steelshaper's Gift, Bala Ged Recovery  , Sevinne's Reclamation

Hard-Hitting Kitties

These good boys and girls are the key to this deck. These creatures are strong on their own, and Arahbo makes them impossible to deal with. In the early game, they will be unmatched! Watch out for decks with large, stompy creature types (like dragons and dinosaurs), creature types that can put a massive number of creatures in front of you (like elves and zombies), or decks with strategies focused on building gigantic creatures (like +1/+1 counter decks) that can outmuscle you later on if you're not careful. Many of these creatures also have evasion to help get around blockers, such as Skyhunter Skirmisher, or help keep defenses up to make counterattack difficult such as Maned Serval.

Note how low the average CMC of this deck is (under 3) to emphasize how fast it likes to get going!

Check out cards in the Other category that give our Hard-Hitting Kitties more abilities or make them even bigger. I am going to call out Dragon Throne of Tarkir as one of the best cards in the deck since it allows us to change strategies in this deck pretty suddenly. This deck is usually considered a 'go tall' deck. This means it likes to focus on making one creature really big. Dragon Throne turns the deck into a 'go wide' deck, meaning the focus is on a massive amount of creatures instead. What you want to do is put Dragon Throne on a large-ish kitty, perhaps one that doesn't want to attack. Then you enter combat and make it bigger with Arahbo. Then you use Dragon Throne to tap it, and make all of your kitties massive trampling kitties!

Upgrades Prowling Serpopard, Loam Lion, Balan, Wandering Knight, Jazal Goldmane, Nacatl War-Pride

Ramp

Ramp, named after the card Rampant Growth, is the ability to exceed 1 mana/turn (the limit allowed by the 1 land/turn rate, assumed the baseline/default for the game). This is a very powerful thing to do, because it can let you play your stronger cards more quickly than your opponents are ready for. Green is the strongest color for ramp, so we want to make sure we have some here. Arahbo plays a mixture of two types of ramp: land-based ramp (like Rampant Growth) and artifact-based ramp (like Selesnya Signet). The reason is land-based is the strongest because lands are the hardest permanent type to destroy, but that kind of ramp is slower (costs more mana) than other types. Artifact ramp is something a lot of white cards enjoy...some potential upgrades for the deck if it starts to focus on equipment do extra things if you have more artifacts in play...so we've included extra artifact ramp. That said, artifact ramp is the easiest kind of ramp to destroy in a game.

Upgrades Land Tax, Smothering Tithe, Traverse the Outlands, Sword of the Animist

Removal

Removal spells are the type of spells that destroy your opponent's things. We want to have a variety of these, because you never know what will ruin your moment. White is one of the strongest removal colors in the game, so we have access to the cheap and effective Swords to Plowshares to eliminate creatures. For other permanent types (or a creature if we're desperate), we get Beast Within and Generous Gift which are top tier!

Board clears (also called 'wraths' for Wrath of God, or mass removal) are an important part of any deck. The number of these included depends on the type of deck. This deck is aggressive and will often have opposing board clears played against it to slow it down, so I only included a few Divine Reckoning and Shatter the Sky.

Upgrades Austere Command, Farewell, Dromoka's Command, Path to Exile, Slaughter the Strong

Supportive Kitties

These are the less beat-face focused kitties that do other unique things for the deck...though they can definitely hit hard if they need to! Some, like Feline Sovereign give you extra removal and bigger kitties. Others, like Realmwalker, provide more velocity for your deck. A lot of these could fall into other categories, but it's better that they're also kitties to help us do what kitties do best...hit hard!

A note on Kaheera, the Orphanguard. Kaheera can be put in our deck as a normal member of the 99, but it is intended to be our Companion (and thus is effectively a 101st card)! This is why no creature in this deck is a non-cat. The rules for this mechanic have changed from what was printed on the card, however. Currently the rules for Companion in Commander is that you can put your companion into your hand from the exile zone by paying {3} as a sorcery (meaning you can only do this on your turn, in the main phase- before or after combat).

Upgrades Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist, Qasali Slingers, Leonin Relic-Warder

Other

There are a few other things the deck does to make sure our cats are purring along smoothly. A few equipment in this section make our kitties bigger or make them harder to block. Felidar Retreat can either make kitties or make our other kitties bigger to 'go wide'. Sejiri Shelter   can protect a kitty in a moment of danger, either from a block that suddenly got dangerous or from an opponent's removal spell.

Felidar Retreat is a great segue into a landfall cats strategy, since there are a good number of cats that care about lands entering the battlefield. Territorial Scythecat, Roaring Earth, and Harrow are emblematic of this strategy.

This deck currently focuses on 2 methods, besides Arahbo, to make our kitties bigger. These are +1/+1 counters (see Felidar Retreat) and equipment (see Forebear's Blade). There are plenty of other methods you could use, based on playstyle and preference. Some prefer enchantment-based styles, using cards like Spirit Mantle, Alpha Status, and Dictate of Heliod. Others prefer to be sneakier with instants like Berserk. You could even use a mixture depending on what you have access too. Artifacts and enchantments, in particular, have some support that focuses on each individually, but some does mix, like with Sigarda's Aid.

Upgrades Robe of Stars, Rhonas's Monument, Heroic Intervention, Unnatural Growth

Land

Only one card in our deck needs 2 {G}, so early game, focus on getting {G}, {W}, {W} as soon as possible. From there, color should be no problem for any single card in your deck. A budget manabase will do to get started, but finding upgrades is very easy. Just swap out lands that always come in tapped for ones that might not as you can trade for them or buy them. A note on Arctic Treeline...this land is sneaky-good! It has the types of Plains and Forest, meaning any card that does not specify that you search your deck for a BASIC land allows you to search for this one. This is a part of what makes more expensive lands such as upgrade Temple Garden so good! Also watch for lands that do extra useful things, Bretagard Stronghold can make your kitties hit harder, upgrade Mutavault is an extra kitty, and upgrade Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire is extra removal.

Upgrades Reliquary Tower, Boseiju, Who Endures, Secluded Courtyard, Hall of the Bandit Lord

Date added	2 years
Last updated	2 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	2 - 0 Mythic Rares 30 - 1 Rares 36 - 0 Uncommons 17 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.70
Tokens	Adorned Pouncer 4/4 B, Beast 3/3 G, Cat 1/1 W w/ Lifelink, Cat Beast 2/2 W, Clue, Elephant 3-3 G, Sacred Cat 1/1 W