My current Commander deck. It's a work in progress still, but the basic idea is to grind out the win by using the powerful draw engine Krav and Regna create. With both out, you can hold up 3 black mana and, over the course of a turn cycle in a normal 4-player game, draw six cards, gain six life, and put 6 +1/+1 counters on Krav. (Regna triggers on each end step you gain life, so the idea is gain life on each opponent's turn, triggering Regna and giving you tokens to sac to Krav on the next turn to keep the engine rolling.)
It's not a competitive deck by any means. It's kind of in a weird place in that it wrecks un-tuned decks but folds against faster/better decks. It does just fine against the people I play against, but it's not especially well suited for more tuned metas. I would estimate it as a 50% deck - there's probably a version of this that's a 75% deck, but this ain't it.
The rest of the deck generally fits into one of three categories: token shenanigans, life gain, and efficient glue cards. It helps that the commanders do two of those things pretty well, but we do have 98 other slots so we want to use them well.
Token Shenanigans
No aristocrats strategy is complete without the package of Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat and Falkenrath Noble. Additionally, we have things like Requiem Angel, Dross Harvester, Twilight Drover, Skullclamp and Pitiless Plunderer to profit off the misery of our tokens. Additionally, we have a few random token generators like Angel of Invention, Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder and Regal Bloodlord. These get especially better with Divine Visitation, which gets especially stupid with Endrek Sahr. There's not a whole lot of spicy stuff here - mostly, we're looking to either profit off the death of our tokens or make more/better tokens. They do interact in interesting ways, though.
Lifegain
The main thing we're looking for here is being able to gain life on other people's turns. The nice thing is that we don't care at all how much life we're gaining or how many times. Krav and Regna do this by themselves provided you have black mana up, but redundancy is always nice. We have some classics like Sun Droplet, Whip of Erebos and Pristine Talisman, but we also have some spicy stuff like Druidic Satchel and Chalice of Life
. While somewhat lackluster looking, instant speed lifegain is the name of the game here. Also, Druidic Satchel lowkey does it all for us. It gains us life, can ramp us, and can make a token. We unfortunately don't have much control over what effect we get, but all three are acceptable. Chalice of Life isn't very versatile, but it's easy to flip and the flipped mode is actually pretty decent, though it sadly doesn't affect the boardstate. It's not good, persay, but I like the card and this is probably the only deck that even has a real use for it. We also have other lifegain payoffs like Sanguine Bond, Vizkopa Guildmage, Aetherflux Reservoir, Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim and Serra Ascendant. Debt to the Deathless and Gray Merchant of Asphodel gives us ways to gain huge chunks of life and close out games.
Efficient Cards
If you can't tell, I really, really, really like board wipes. If you play with a regular group, being the boardwipe guy is a pretty good reputation to have. It puts the fear into them and makes them play more cautiously, giving you more time to bury them under the inevitability of Krav and Regna's insane card draw engine. However, we do want a degree of flexibility in our board wipes. Things that can hit multiple permanent types like Akroma's Vengeance and Merciless Eviction are the topline wipes, while boardwipes that leave behind a beater like Deathbringer Regent and Magister of Worth are second tier and perfectly respectable. We also have some functional boardwipes like Dictate of Erebos and Reaper from the Abyss that, in conjunction with our engine, keep the board clear of any real threats.
Additionally, we pack a reasonable package of repeatable card advantage. Underworld Connections, Well of Lost Dreams, Arguel's Blood Fast
, Erebos, God of the Dead, Sorin, Grim Nemesis and the aforementioned Skullclamp keep our hand full in the event Regna and Krav can't stay on the battlefield. We also have other cards that functionally generate card advantage, like Palace Siege, and Damnable Pact (which also doubles as a way to finish off opponents). Basically, we're going to draw cards whether or not our commanders are online, and hopefully that card advantage will help us grind out the win. Trading Post can gain us life and make tokens, and can help us recur stuff like Hedron Archive to draw cards in an emergency. An underrated card draw engine is becoming the monarch, and Knights of the Black Rose makes the monarch and gives us some life drain on other peoples' turns in the event it gets taken from us. Nim Deathmantle is a source of pseudo-card advantage in that it lets us recur our commanders (or other creatures) to avoid having to pay commander tax, which gets brutal with how much they already cost. It also grants some degree of evasion, which is nice on Krav.
Beyond board wipes and card advantage engines, the rest of the removal package simultaneously functions as a utility package. Profane Command and Valorous Stance are prime examples - they can either snipe a threat or do something else. Utter End is another good example and a personal favorite - it hits anything at instant speed, giving us a nice catchall for any problem. We also have both of the on-color confluences, which can play a reasonably wide variety of roles. We also have Argentum Armor, which is here primarily as a repeatable source of permanent removal and as a way to make Regna into a more respectable threat. Krav gets big enough that the buff is mostly irrelevant (and he gets chump blocked normally anyway), and putting it on Regna gives us a 10/10 flier that shoots something down every time it attacks.
In conclusion, we're all about efficient cards that can either directly play into our gameplan or are just efficient. I definitely enjoy this deck and recommend the commanders to anybody who likes lifegain or just efficient draw engines.
