O Navigator, My Navigator

Commander / EDH Artifact Combo Control Enchantment Pillow Fort WU (Azorius)

HarveyPekar

Land (35)

• 1x Academy Ruins
• 1x Adarkar Wastes
• 1x Ancient TombGC
• 1x Celestial Colonnade
• 1x Cephalid Coliseum
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Glacial Fortress
• 1x Hallowed Fountain
• 1x High Market
• 1x Inventors' Fair
• 1x Irrigated Farmland
• 5x Island
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Minamo, School at Water's Edge
• 1x Mistveil Plains
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Mystic Gate
• 5x Plains
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Prairie Stream
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Seat of the Synod
• 1x Strip Mine
• 1x Temple of Enlightenment
• 1x Tundra
• 1x Windswept Heath

Ramp (7)

• 1x Azorius Signet
• 1x Hedron Archive
• 1x Land Tax
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Solemn Simulacrum
• 1x Talisman of Progress

Counters (6)

• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Desertion
• 1x Forbid
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Pact of Negation
• 1x Swan Song

Removal (15)

• 1x Austere Command
• 1x Cyclonic RiftGC
• 1x Detention Sphere
• 1x Hour of Revelation
• 1x Imprisoned in the Moon
• 1x Nevinyrral's Disk
• 1x Overwhelming Splendor
• 1x Parallax Wave
• 1x Rout
• 1x Spine of Ish Sah
• 1x Sun Titan
• 1x Supreme Verdict
• 1x Swords to Plowshares
• 1x Time Wipe
• 1x Wrath of God

Draw (13)

• 1x Cephalid Coliseum
• 1x Fact or Fiction
• 1x Future Sight
• 1x Induced Amnesia
• 1x Land Tax
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Rhystic StudyGC
• 1x Scroll Rack
• 1x Search for Azcanta  ^Flip
• 1x Sphinx's Revelation
• 1x Standstill
• 1x Thirst for Knowledge
• 1x Windfall

Tutors (7)

• 1x Academy Rector
• 1x Enlightened TutorGC
• 1x Intuition
• 1x Mystical TutorGC
• 1x Recruiter of the Guard
• 1x Tolaria West
• 1x Trinket Mage

Pillows (3)

• 1x Ghostly Prison
• 1x Humility
• 1x Propaganda

Commander (1)

Value (14)

• 1x Angelic Renewal
• 1x Codex Shredder
• 1x Gift of Immortality
• 1x Grinding Station
• 1x Induced Amnesia
• 1x Leyline of Anticipation
• 1x Minamo, School at Water's Edge
• 1x Open the Vaults
• 1x Parallax Wave
• 1x Phyrexian Metamorph
• 1x Replenish
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Snapcaster Mage
• 1x Starfield of Nyx

Winning (10)

• 1x Academy Rector
• 1x Angelic Renewal
• 1x Blasting Station
• 1x Gift of Immortality
• 1x Grinding Station
• 1x Nevinyrral's Disk
• 1x Omniscience
• 1x Open the Vaults
• 1x Replenish
• 1x Spine of Ish Sah

Enablers (2)

• 1x Barrin, Master Wizard
• 1x Claws of Gix

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Maybeboard

Other (16)

• 1x Approach of the Second Sun
• 1x Aura of Silence
• 1x Careful Consideration
• 1x Cast Out
• 1x Eidolon of Rhetoric
• 1x Fabricate
• 1x Fumigate
• 1x Long-Term Plans
• 1x Norn's Annex
• 1x Sphere of Safety
• 1x Steel Hellkite
• 1x Thopter Spy Network
• 1x Tormod's Crypt
• 1x Trading Post
• 1x Tunnel Vision
• 1x Wurmcoil Engine

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Oh, shit, I didn't know you like to play yourself in front'cha friends

Sitting there, comboing to no end

Who will be the navigator of this ship?

If it goes down, don't you know you have to go wit it?

• Q-Tip, in response to me sacrificing Academy Rector to Claws of Gix .

Why Hanna?

If you want a commander whose graveyard is an extension of her hand,

If you want to play artificer and enchantress simultaneously,

If you want to play sacrifice without or ,

If you want a mana artifact to be the most important spell in your 99,

If you want to play a classic control deck with a combo finish where every card fits like puzzle pieces,

If you want the added bonus of playing with the most beautiful card art in the whole damn game,

You might like Hanna, Ship's Navigator .

Individual Card Choices

The Enablers

These are the cards that lets the deck do everything it wants to do: the universal sacrifice outlets. Since these cards do not discriminate on which card type you sacrifice, these cards will protect your permanents from exile effects, abuse effects like Standstill by working around their effects, let you reuse artifact/enchantment ETBs in response to mass reanimation, gather additional value in response to mass removal, break cards like Gift of Immortality , you name it. If there's any value to be gained by sacrificing (especially considering how rare effects that let you sacrifice enchantments are), and there often is when your commander provides easy graveyard recursion, these cards do it all.

• Claws of Gix - gains additional value by providing incidental lifegain and being the cheaper by far of the two enablers.

• Barrin, Master Wizard - you pay a premium for his ability, but oftentimes it's worth it to bounce an opponent's threat or reuse one of your creature ETBs.

We only have the two, but the tutor package for them is quite deep, putting us more at a virtual 5 or so copies.

Winning

You can fiddle with value engines and police the board all you want, but the game doesn't end until you win. These are the cards and combinations that let you cross the finish line.

• Omniscience - a one-card combo with practically anything, though you often need a quorum of cards in hand to actually take advantage of its ridiculous effect. Partners with Spine of Ish Sah and Grinding Station for an immediate victory. Cast Spine (the target does not matter), sacrifice it to Grinding Station to mill opponent for 3, return Spine to hand, repeat until all opponents are milled out. If they are running graveyard-shuffle effects, you still get to destroy all their permanents and take the long way home. Replace Grinding Station with Claws or Barrin for a soft lock, destroying 1 permanent for each or you spend to sacrifice Spine.

• Academy Rector - oftentimes just Omniscience hiding behind a 1/2, but can also fetch effective control tech like (ugh) Humility , Overwhelming Splendor , or Starfield of Nyx . Keep in mind that she works best with sacrifice outlets, but killing her with your own wrath effect can also do in a pinch.

• Blasting Station + Sun Titan and either Gift of Immortality or Angelic Renewal - Our solid plan B. Titan auto-recurs with the enchantments, giving you one extremely tough to remove creature as well as plenty of ETBs if you can find a sac outlet. Blasting station gives us the immediate win, killing Sun Titan and untapping whenever it returns, is recurrable as well with Sun Titan if an Angelic Renewal is already on the board, and worst case can be useful on its own to pick off X/1 idiots.

• Open the Vaults + Replenish - alternate ways to cheat big enchantments, or a big load of artifacts and enchantments, into play. These cards can let you win on the spot with combo pieces in the yard, recover from opposing board wipes, or simply pile on to create an untouchable board state. This deck can be quite good at filling its graveyard on its own volition, and is well equipped to take advantage of these mass recursion spells.

• Parallax Wave + Starfield of Nyx + 3 other enchantments. Spells death for creature-based strategies, as this combination of cards allows you to blink your own creatures arbitrarily while keeping all other fellas under permanent exile. The interaction itself is complex: Remove a fading counter from Parallax Wave, targeting an opponent's creature, to mark it for exile. You can do this up to 4 times, but be careful because once Parallax Wave is out of counters, it can no longer protect itself. Holding priority, remove a counter to exile Parallax Wave itself (since it's a creature). As above, you might want to keep an extra counter or two on hand to blink in response to removal. Let the stack resolve. Parallax Wave is exiled, and its Leaves the Battlefield trigger hits the stack, resolving and returning Parallax Wave to play. The original activation, targeting your opponent's creature, resolves, exiling it permanently. To re-use your own creatures/enchantments, simply let the initial activation resolve before blinking Parallax Wave itself. This will protect virtually all your creatures/enchantments from spot removal (notably, except for Starfield), gives them pseudo-vigilance, and lets you re-use ETBs or tuck away unbroken Standstills to your heart's content.

Ramp

The curve on the deck skews high, particularly towards expensive artifact spells, so we prioritize cheap artifact ramp here for its efficiency and synergy with Hanna.

• Azorius Signet , Mana Crypt , Sol Ring , Thought Vessel - The bread and butter, cheap artifact ramp. For whatever reason, I don't yet own the appropriate Talisman, but it will be added once I do.

• Hedron Archive , Solemn Simulacrum - More expensive and a bit midrange-y, but irreplaceable for their value and synergy with Hanna. Simulacrum in particular has additional synergies with our creature bouncing, recursion effects. It feels real good to suit it up with a Gift of Immortality with Claws of Gix on the board.

• Land Tax - Doesn't set you ahead on mana, but guarantees land drops and is almost always turned on in a meta with any green players. Plus, it has exceptional synergy with our draw suite, which I'll get into below.

Tutors

Not much to elaborate. These reduce our virtual deck size while letting us find answers when we need 'em.

• Mystical Tutor , Enlightened Tutor - The former: A wrath, counterspell, or Open the Vaults once-removed. The latter: the key to the deck's biggest toolbox. Both synergize with Future Sight and Sensei's Divining Top.

• Academy Rector , Trinket Mage , Recruiter of the Guard - Our creature tutors, one of which can also find other creature tutors! All but rector pair very well with a Sun Titan .

• Tolaria West - Search up a utility land, Mana Crypt, or Claws of Gix. Can tap for blue mana in a pinch.

• Intuition - About as close to Gifts Ungiven as you can get without breaking the laws of EDH. This card is absolutely nuts with Hanna, effectively letting you draw 3 specific artifacts/enchantments for , or put together foolproof packages like Replenish, Open the Vaults, Snapcaster.

Control Cards

The deck, when it isn't accidentally comboing off with an early Rector, can play like a typical UW Cheons control list with the benefit of artifact and enchantment recursion. As such, it runs wide suites of card draw, removal, and to a lesser extent counterspells to dig for answers and police the board.

Card Draw

• Careful Consideration , Thirst for Knowledge , Cephalid Coliseum , Fact or Fiction , Windfall - Hanna naturally increases the value of draw effects that send excess cards to the graveyard, effectively adding half-a-card to their already-efficient value. These let us toss artifacts and enchantments to put them "on ice" until we can activate Hanna, or build up for a massive Open the Vaults.

• Scroll Rack - The most breakable card draw spell in the deck. Repeatable, scales with hand size, absolutely nuts with Land Tax , Windfall , Future Sight , and even plain shuffle effects. Can often let us see 10 unique cards in a single turn while refining the quality of our hand.

• Coercive Portal - A howling mine that doubles as a doomsday device. Clears the board when one opponent becomes a massive threat, gathers advantage at parity, and you can always sacrifice it once you pull ahead.

• Future Sight - A bit expensive, but well worth it for The simple and powerful effect. Synergizes with Codex Shredder and, especially, Sensei's Divining Top (which lets you tap, draw, and play from the top of your library to effectively draw a card for each you spend).

• Sensei's Divining Top - Priceless for its small synergies. Controls the top of your deck, turns shuffle effects into virtual card advantage, is a miniature mana sink, and even protects itself.

• Rhystic Study , Mystic Remora - The "punisher" draw spells. Repeatable, forces opponents into either giving you free draw or making awkward plays. Rewards you for playing with stupid friends. The cumulative upkeep on Remora is minimized as a downside because of, duh, all them recursion.

• Standstill - My favorite card draw spell in the deck. Cast it and build up your hand with Hanna activations while everyone else is too spooked to cast a spell, or simply sac it on your last opponent's end step and bring it back to hand with Hanna to carry on through your own turn unimpeded.

• Sphinx's Revelation - The most "pure" card draw spell in the deck, and often also the most powerful. It's brought me back into hopeless games more times than I can recall.

Removal

• Detention Sphere - The most versatile spot removal of the deck. Can be abused to permanently exile targets when sac'd in response to its ETB. Godly value when paired with Sun Titan + sac outlet.

• Parallax Wave - Only hits creatures, but can permanently exile up to 5 of them when dropped with Claws/Barrin on board. As detailed above, goes Super Saiyan when paired with an active Starfield of Nyx .

• Swords to Plowshares - The most efficient single-target removal spell in the game.

• Wrath of God , Supreme Verdict , Cyclonic Rift , Rout , Austere Command , Nevinyrral's Disk - Mass removal. Wrath is efficient, Verdict is uncounterable, Rout is a surprise, Rift is rift, Austere command is versatile, and Disk recurs with Hanna.

• Spine of Ish Sah - Even without Omniscience, Spine is a house in this deck. Kills any permanent, easily reusable with a sac outlet, and basically draws a card for free if you decide to run Trading Post .

• Imprisoned in the Moon - The cleanest answer to any opposing commander.

• Martyr's Bond . A nonland permanent-affecting Grave Pact , all yours to abuse with the Claws and recursion.

Counterspells

• Pact of Negation , Swan Song - The most all-in-when-you-bout-to-win counterspells. The former is almost always a blowout, but you really have to be careful with it sometimes.

• Desertion - Expensive, but the prospect of stealing an opposing commander makes it too spicy to cut.

• Forbid - Similar to the draw-and-discard spells mentioned above, synergizes with Hanna's ability and other recursion effects. A nasty combination with Standstill .

• Mana Drain - In the past, has let me hardcast an Omniscience on turn 5.

• Counterspell - Strictly worse Mana Drain.

The Pillow Fort

As a control/combo deck, we don't have many ways to block on the ground, so we must deter attackers with our artifacts and enchantments.

• Propaganda , Ghostly Prison - The bread and butter of the pillow fort. Especially good against go-wide strategies.

• Humility - Ugh. An oxymoron, the best protective card in the deck that has the ironic downside of making you a colossal target. Still, nerfing every opposing creature and their ETBs is too strong to consider leaving out. Be careful deploying this one, because it will shut off Hanna too.

Etc

The rest of the spells, which all provide additional value and utility in their own ways.

• Codex Shredder - Probably a controversial choice, but there is too much synergy and incremental value to be gained off of this unassuming Lantern Control staple. Tutorable with Trinket Mage, it can ruin another player's Vampiric Tutor , build you towards threshold, be a virtual scry with Future Sight and/or Divining Top, and can blind-flip artifacts and enchantments into the yard, right where you want them. Lastly, its second ability lets us reuse our instants, creatures, and sorceries, and demonstrates a slow loop with Open the Vaults .

• Gift of Immortality - Every creature in our deck either has an ETB or LTB. Since Gift resets itself every end step, we can reuse these effects upwards of 4 times per turn cycle when coupled with a sac outlet. Wins the game occasionally with a Sun Titan. Worst case, it's Totem Armor for Hanna.

• Grinding Station - In addition to its role in the game-ending combo, it's a manaless sacrifice outlet that self-mills.

• Leyline of Anticipation - Giving all our cards flash lets us play around our own, and our opponent's, removal. Becomes especially nasty when flashing in stuff like Standstill , Phyrexian Metamorph , or (ugh) Humility .

• Phyrexian Metamorph - A versatile clone that Hanna can recur.

• Snapcaster Mage - Flashes back tutors, mass recursion spells, counters, wraths, you name it. Fetchable with Recruiter and a primo target for Gift of Immortality .

• Starfield of Nyx , Sun Titan - Besides Hanna, the best recursion engines in the deck. I've already covered most of their applications above, from repeatable removal each turn, to just undoing removal, to the very-real-win-condition-when-applied-in-the-correct-timestamp-order of Starfield + (ugh) Humility.

Utility Lands

In addition to these utility lands, we try to run at least 10 basic lands so that our Land Tax + Fetches don't run out of gas in a grindy game.

• Minamo, School at Water's Edge - An island with upside, letting us activate Hanna twice in one turn.

• High Market - Sacrifice outlet. Indispensable. Of note, I also tried out Phyrexia's Core in the deck previously but never found myself using it, only getting frustrated at the addition of an extra colorless utility land and wishing I had just played a basic instead. Still, your mileage may vary.

• Academy Ruins - A value engine on its own. If Hanna gets priced out of the game, or if you have an onboard (ugh) Humility, this does a great impression.

• Cephalid Coliseum - It digs deep and builds your yard quickly for an Open the Vaults. Threshhold isn't usually too difficult to turn on, either, especially with Grinding Station or Codex Shredder. Scurries through the deck disgustingly quickly when recurred with a Sun Titan.

• Inventors' Fair - An additional artifact tutor that isn't too hard to turn on. Incidental life gain is also welcome.

• Mistveil Plains - Fetchable, with the small but useful ability to shuffle in spent instants, creatures, or sorceries so that, down the line, you may find and play them again. "Recursion" for every piece of the deck that isn't otherwise easily recurred, a targeted response to GY exile (something this deck unfortunately otherwise lacks) and plain great with tutors.

• Strip Mine , Reliquary Tower - Kill lands, keep cards, not much else to say.

Maybeboard Choices

When certain decks come a-knockin', it's time to specialize. The classical control shell allows for a lot of customization, based on which decks you face down weekly; the key to beating each opponent requires different locks, so to speak. There are tons of great utility artifacts and enchantments that can easily slot in, and even some alternate wraths or threat packages. The following cards once had a home in the deck and may again in the future, depending on meta changes:

• Thopter Spy Network - Goes up in value against a creature-heavy meta. Is almost always turned on, and more often than not is a one-sided howling mine that spits out blockers for days when necessary.

• Thran Dynamo - A "go big" ramp spell. Hardcasting Omniscience isn't just a fevered dream with this bad boy around. Unsure what a specific meta choice for this would be, but it's a good addition to the deck if you make additional changes to skew the curve higher, like adding a Mind's Dilation or Steel Hellkite .

• Trading Post - colloquially known as the Artifact Planeswalker, Trading Post lives up to its reputation. It provides chump blockers, is a sac outlet for artifacts (including itself), lets you throw big enchantments in the yard for reanimation, and does an impersonation of Hanna (for artifacts only, though). Very versatile, but also a little slow-going for a value engine, so it gains ground against control and other midrange value decks in the meta.

• Tormod's Crypt - Graveyard hate that only hits opponents and, most importantly, doesn't exile itself. Cut from the maindeck when the incidence of Meren decks fell about 80% since I started playing.

• Treasure Mage , Steel Hellkite , Memnarch , Possessed Portal - A miniature package to add more must-answer threats to the deck, plus an additional way to go find them.

• Trophy Mage , Ashnod's Altar , and an infinite mana outlet - Further redundancy for the Sun Titan combo.

• Eidolon of Rhetoric / Rule of Law / Arcane Laboratory - Brutal against storm, Maelstrom Wanderer.

• Nevermore , Pithing Needle , Sorcerous Spyglass - The most targeted of all targeted hate spells. A vastly underrated effect in commander, especially when facing down voltron or superfriends.

• Darksteel Mutation is an excellent and synergistic way to take care of problem creatures, but can easily backfire in a meta with many +1/+1-matters commanders running around (which is my meta).

• Opalescence - greatly lowers the price point for turning on Parallax Wave shenanigans. A legendary headache when coupled with Humility .

• Wurmcoil Engine - if the fear settles in, people will target you. Wurmcoil offers a terrific stabilizing effect, and is one of my favorite creatures to slap a Gift of Immortality onto.

• Soul of New Phyrexia - Noticing a lot of Fracturing Gusts and Green Sun's Zenith s for Bane of Progress es? Might wanna start running this bad boy. A bit of an expensive effect, but an irreplaceable one. Can be its own sorta-win condition with Nev's Disk.

• Fumigate - Can be interchangeable with Supreme Verdict , if aggro or value piles trouble you more than blue mages.

• Norn's Annex , Sphere of Safety - Additional anti-aggro measures, though Sphere would need to enter the mainboard with 3+ enchantment friends to reach an effective critical mass.

• Elixir of Immortality - If the yard hate gets too strong to keep the recursions a-recurrin', an onboard-instant shuffle effect like this can save your day, turning a game-ending Bojuka Bog into just another setback.

How To Competitivify This Shell

Hanna's activated ability makes her a terrific Stax commander, and luckily this particular sacrifice-focused build of Hanna lends itself naturally to a stax package. Stax isn't my cup of tea, but it's undeniably powerful to sacrifice a Static Orb on your opponent's EOT and immediately bring it back to hand. Pretty much every stax piece is abusable this way, but the big impact ones tend to have the, uh, biggest impact. Try siding out some of the more mana-intensive value cards and throw this package into your deck if you want to hold game with the big girls:

• Static Orb , Stasis , Winter Orb , Tangle Wire and Rising Waters to pin down your opponent's permanents. Saccing on opponent's EOT and activating Hanna breaks symmetry in a massive way.
• Pendrell Mists and Overburden to hate on creature decks. This would minimally affect us even without sacrifice tricks.
• Fabricate , Idyllic Tutor , Whir of Invention - Additional tutors to dig for the combos, and generally make the deck more consistent.
• Arcane Laboratory and Rule of Law to hate on spellslingers.
• Not Cursed Totem :(
• Moat if budget is not an issue.
• Parallax Tide for the rare Mass Land Destruction effect in blue, plus a neat game-winning combo with Parallax Wave .
• Mindslaver as an alternate, terrifically cruel win condition.

Date added	8 years
Last updated	3 years
Key combos	Blasting Station + Sun Titan Open the Vaults + Replenish Parallax Wave + Starfield of Nyx
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	16 - 0 Mythic Rares 52 - 0 Rares 17 - 0 Uncommons 5 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.19
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U
Folders	Other peoples sweet decks