A Preamble:
Before we begin, let's take a look at the top/most played cedh decks right now:
Breakfast Hulk
Food Chain Tazri
Food Chain Prossh
Kess/Jeleva Grixis Storm
Teferi Chain Veil
Gitrog Monster Combo
Zur Doomsday Variants
Thrasios/Tymna Scepter Variants
Blood Pod
Tasigur Control
Selvala Brostorm
Paradox Sisay
Hackball Momir
Control Baral
Razakats
HEMAN Variants
Ok, so. Not exhaustive, but what appears to be a common denominator to these decks (sans ONE).
They all revolve around creatures. Creatures act as accelerants, disruption (rec sage, notion thief)
and even win cons (Labman is a creature, and is is intergral--though not necessary--to storm/doomsday lists). The printing of partner commanders shifted the metagame from more spell-based doomsday decks to T&T dramatic scepter-ish builds and the emphasis on little dudes. Control decks like Tasigur or Blood Pod even rely on multiple boardwipes to remove dorks or stax pieces like Thalia and get ahead in other non-creature ways. However, even these decks rely on creatures. Tasigur combo decks use Flash/Hulk, reanimator or infinite mana combos to win.
With Teferi Chain Vein being a truly creatureless deck (Storm is the only one that comes close), there is not much room for powerful anti-creature pieces...Until now.
One of the strongest (if not arguably THE strongest) enchantments in EDH/cEDH is Humility. Absolutely backbreaking against certain strategies, Humility can control multiple archetypes and decks by itself. Until now, HEMAN variants have been the only competitive/top tier decks to abuse the powerful enchantment. Recently, however, wizards did something they have never done before: Multi-colored, planeswalker commanders. Before commander 2018, the only way you could use Humilty with a planeswalker commander was (cough) Nahiri. Mono-white has ever been plagued by lack of strong tutors and a strong proactive gameplan to overcome blue or black based decks (even green!). Now, with the printing of Aminatou and Estrid, we have an option to use a planeswalker commander with Humility and have the
support of more powerful colors.
Here, we turn to Aminatou. A three CMC walker (already sounds good) that has pseudo card advantage with the plus ability and an interesting minus (the ultimate is more for jokes...). Originally, I was incredibly disappointed with the plus one NOT generating CA (come one, is it THAT bad to draw 2?). However, looking at the previously most powerful deck in legacy, miracles, top of deck manipulation can be a very powerful control strategy. As such, we can use cards seen in legacy play such as terminus or counter-top locks, to help control our opponent's and supplement our humility plan.
Deck Direction:
So, now that we've established how we got here, what does the deck really do? Well, Esper colors generally lend themselves to control strategies as well as the established Doomsday/storm shells. Personally, while it is a powerful strategy, I tend to shy away from Doomsday, as it necessitates labman (a largely useless card outside of the combo). Storm seems like a good shell to slot into. This deck isn't running red, so we're out wheel of fortune,past in flames, gamble and dack. So, I tried to build this less high-tide, more ad nauseam. Fortunately, we have angel's grace in white. This lends to just grabbing the entire deck with AN and using it for multiple combos (more later). The deck's construction lends itself to other powerful hate card like Rest in Peace and Leyline of the Void as it does not really lean hard on its graveyard to run or combo off. This one-sidedness is mirrored in TCV decks that use grafdigger's cage to stop flashhulk decks, flashback and the like. Only here, the deck gets the significantly more powerful white and black hate (leyline, RIP).As mentioned, previously, the deck is trying to move into some of the space Miracles occupied in legacy, using cards that synergize with top of library (terminus) to help control the board and abuse Animatou's plus ability. Additionally, the plus can be used to put back useless stuff stuck in your hand (omniscience) and shuffle it away with fetches, a la Jace/brainstorm.
Moving to the second ability, we see a lot of potential there. As menionted on the forum, Aminatou has infinte ETB with Felidar Guardian. Using The Chain Veil, we can get two activations of Aminatou to reset TCV and a mana rock to generate infinte mana. Additionally, we can reset mystic remora counters or targets with something like Grasp of Fate (not currently running) as well as just getting great value off of Mana Vault or Grim Monolith. we can even consider something like Ichor Wellspring, though it is more narrow (better in Daretti).
The ultimate is more of a joke, though I suppose if you have infinite activatinos of Aminatou with The Chain Veil, you can gain control of all non-land permanents...
How Does the Deck Win?:
Being in Esper, we have access to several infinite combos as well as one-two punches to KO our opponents.
1) Ad Nauseum+Angel's Grace.
-This allows us to draw the entire deck. Once in hand, there is the option to A) windfall and (likely) kill the
table or B) play aetherflux resevoir, dump the giant hand with
paradox engine or dramatic sceptor and orbital laser our opponents.
2) Aetherflux Reservoir.
- Manual style. The deck has a pretty low cmc. Combined with a large amount of draw, you can
ostensibly get the Resevoir "storm" high enough in a single turn to laserbeam people.
3) Infinite Blink.
-Using Felidar Guardian (one of the few creatures in the deck) we have infinite ETB and mill our opponent's with Altar of the Brood
3) Ugin.
Using infinite activations of The Chain Veil, we Ghostfire our opponents to death.
4) Blue Sun's Zenith.
A reasonable draw spell on it's own, with infinte mana we mill our opponent's out.
Of note (enablers):
The deck includes both of the white rectors. Of the few creatures in the deck, these function with Flash to grab either humility, omniscience or a planeswalker. Why include creatures in a humility deck? Well, if you have humility already out, then there is no need to grab it is there?
Teferi, Temporal Archmage is a common sight helming his own deck. Here, he can also achieve infinite mana with the Chain Veil and Animatou’s blink ability. Minus him to untap rocks, float mana and activate the Chain Veil. Now you can blink with Aminatou and keep going
Will continue to update and refine
