Welcome to my take on an agressive, combat based Saskia deck. I have found this to be the hardest commander to build around. At first I built this commander like an aggro deck, but I found it tended to run out of gas to soon and I struggled to kill the last player. And after a boardwipe...well, we all know how that tale ends when you have a combat based creature deck. So to conclude, there are a few things I don't want this deck to do:
- Voltron: to boring; tried that in the past with another deck
- Infect: my playgroup doesn't like that at all.
The basic idea of this deck is pretty straight forward: cast creatures and combine those creatures with some utility to take everyone out while also letting my opponent take as much extra damage as possible in the meantime via combat or lifeloss.
In order to get to that point I need to be able to cast those spells, so I started with ramp card. I wanted this to be a fast deck, so there is a little focus on ramp on mana value 2 or less. With the snow lands from Kaldheim that was made a little easier. Three Visits, Nature's Lore, Farseek and Into the North is what I think are the best ones. I like to spread my ramp between a few categories so there are some creatures that help with the ramp part. Birds of Paradise is the fastest option I could find. Sakura-Tribe Elder is just good and I lastly added Dockside Extortionist. Its fast, it generates lots of mana; just a broken card overall. I topped it off with the classic rocks Sol Ring and Arcane Signet. Because it is a 4-colour deck and I am on a semi-budget I also added Chromatic Lantern to help with the colour fixing.
Next, I looked at some card draw options witch was quite difficult. Luckily there were some great additions in the last sets. I ended up with a mix of combat based draw effects like Tymna the Weaver and Ohran Frostfang as this card also gives a nice keyword. Beast Whisperer and Guardian Project are creature based card draw witch green is famous for and can draw multiple cards. Phyrexian Arena and Twilight Prophet give me a more slow but consistent card draw with an extra benefit from the latter. For some impulse draw I added Painful Truths, Read the Bones and Sign in Blood because every deck needs some unconditional card draw and these are cheap spells.
I then looked at the core of the deck: combat. I added a ton of creatures with keywords and / or creatures that give me keywords. I choose to focus on a few keywords. The first one is haste as I want to speed up my game and attack as soon as my creatures come down. Samut, Voice of Dissent, Rhythm of the Wild and ogre battle driver are good examples. I also added Urabrask the Hidden, not only for the haste part, but also for the fact it taps creatures my opponents control. I then added Chainer, Nightmare Adapt to get some extra value out of the yard. I topped it off with the classics: Swiftfoot Boots and Lightning Greaves. They give haste and some protection against removal. All that haste makes it much easier to attack fast witch is the main goal of this deck.
Other relevant keywords are trample, given by cards like Nylea, God of the Hunt, Pathbreaker Ibex and Shadowspear. Lifelink (as an added effect to something else) is also a small part of this deck to outlast my opponents simply by having a higher life total. The keywords vigilance (protection from retaliation) and flying (evasion) are also seen a bunch of times. Lastly I added Iroas, God of Victory because menace increases the chance even further for pushing through damage.
I lastly added a light myriad theme to the deck. Its fits the combat philosopy and it is just such a fun mechanic.
Blade of Selves, Duke Ulder Ravengard provide this keyword and I added Elturel Survivors and Herald of the Host because they are good creatures (I hope to someday add battle angels of tyr but it is such an expensive card right now....)
In a combat based deck there is need for protecting the board you have. Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots protect key creatures. I then added Boros Charm to protect me from boardwipes. I could add more of those type of cards but I feel they are very defensive and that's something this deck doesn't want. As a finisher I added Akroma's Will. I think it is a great spell that no one expects and it fits the combat focus of this deck.
Losing a bit on the aggro aspect, this is still a fast deck and I think this approach can hold it's own in longer games. I added a bit more card draw, ramp and (mass)removal to this deck to make that chance that much bigger. Also added some recursion in this deck.
Let me know what you think....ideas, suggestions are greatly appreciated. If you like the deck....a +1 would be great!