Deck Rating: 6 out of 10
Deck Strategy: Combo, Pillow Fort, Burn
One look at Gisela, Blade of Goldnight is sure to raise some of your opponents' eyebrows. All your damage doubled, and all their damage halved? These are the kind of game-changing abilities that prompt your foes to shift more attention your way, before you can get your angelic general to work. That's okay though; this deck excels at blunting aggression, and your frustrated opponents will soon find themselves giving up and attacking others.
Of course, that's exactly what we want. Looking at Gisela's triggered abilities, a player will likely surmise that your aim is to win through incremental value. While that's possible, this deck is not in the half-measures business, no sir. We are looking for its key combo piece, that we want to set up and protect at all costs - Heartless Hidetsugu. On its own, Hidetsugu's activated ability is fearsome; with Gisela's buff, it's typically an instant victory.
Now that we know what the keystone of this deck is, how do we keep it running? Several pillars:
- Damage protection effects, serving as redundancies for Gisela's ability or in addition to hers (Guardian Seraph, Hedron-Field Purists, Thunderstaff, Urza's Armor, Orbs of Warding, Protection of the Hekma). You get to choose in which order the effects are applied; typically, adding the subtraction effects after Gisela's halving effect provides the most value. Cumulatively, this will make you a very frustrating target to attack.
- Removal protection effects, to keep the key pieces of your combo on the board. Shielded by Faith, Timely Ward, Indestructibility and Tyrite Sanctum serve to hold your boardstate in place barring focused, inefficient removal. Mask of Avacyn, Swiftfoot Boots and Whispersilk Cloak prevent targeting altogether; combine both for best results.
- Efficient burn spells and enhancements, enabling us to remove even big threats for cheap. This deck has all the Red direct-damage staples: Lightning Bolt, Shock, Incinerate. Under Gisela's rule, they all do double damage, allowing them to punch way above their weight class. This gets even better when we get cards like Torbran, Thane of Red Fell, Rem Karolus, Stalwart Slayer and Fire Servant out. With everything in place and some careful effect sequencing, the humble -costed Shock cleaves a 20-damage swath through an opponent's face.
- Recursion. If, despite all our defensive layers, opponents still manage to remove our combo pieces, we can just get them back. With Codex Shredder, Remember the Fallen, Venerable Warsinger, Conqueror's Foothold and Reconstruct History at our disposal, the graveyard is our oyster. Pull from Eternity ensures we can get Hidetsugu back even if he gets exiled!
To support the pillow fort, we require a number of key resources. In order of importance, these are:
- Card Draw. This deck gets major mileage from Infiltration Lens, even more so if Wyleth, Soul of Steel gets to wield it. On the gradual side, the Conqueror's Foothold provides reliable draws.
- High-Efficiency Creatures, which the Boros colors fortunately get many of. Isamaru, Hound of Konda, Sky Terror, Boros Reckoner and Swiftblade Vindicator are all excellent examples. Bolstered by this deck's damage prevention and enhancement effects, they fight like demons.
- Combo Redundancy. This helps us ensure we can use our winning combo, even if Gisela gets hated off the board. Gratuitous Violence is a perfectly serviceable stand-in for our angelic buff. Malignus benefits both from this enchantment and Gisela's buff. If it gets through (a simple Whispersilk Cloak does the trick) it will kill any player in one hit. Naturally, a high- Jaya's Immolating Inferno with the damage enhancements is also a solid game-closer.
Combos and Interactions
It's a fairly straightforward deck with a single key combo, but it does feature some neat interactions between cards, as always. These are my favorites:
- Fortune Thief + Shielded by Faith makes you effectively unbeatable by damage not dealt by commanders (and alternate wincons, of course). Neat!
- Conqueror's Foothold + Goblin Legionnaire. The ship-land's repeatable recursion plus the deck's triggered and static abilities turn this humble goblin into a mighty reusable boomstick and saving grace.
- Dazzling Reflection + Malignus is just one of those simple, high-efficiency joys. Two mana will get you double-digit lifegain as if it's nothing.
Pet Cards
To me, Commander is a format where fun is first, and competition second. As such, almost every deck I make will have some cards that are probably not the best choice for inclusion. They're there to stay, though, for no other reason that I like their art/flavor/design.
- Citanul Flute - If you have this out, you might want to protect it with Indestructibility, because damn will your foes ever be scrambling to kill it. Every turn, you can whistle up the body you need most, no strings attached.
- Radiating Lightning - The deck gets fantastic mileage out of mediocre spells by virtue of its damage enhancement effects. This arguably overcosted spell now becomes a fearsome punishment, capable of clearing a player's board and wounding them severely in the process. Upgrades, people, upgrades!
- General Ferrous Rokiric - 13 multicolored spells in the deck means some 4/4 Golem tokens won't be far behind, and that's not even considering recursion effects. Even better still, the golems benefit from the deck's passive enhancements, turning them into real stompies to boot.
- Soul Sear - Few players are prepared for a direct-damage spell to kill their precious indestructible creature. 5 damage is usually insufficient to kill a big stompy threat; fortunately, in this deck, the Big Sear more often comes in to the tune of 14-15. Bye bye, Blightsteel Colossus. See ya when we see ya.
- Price of Glory. A card your opponents are guaranteed to hate, this thing draws spot removal like flies to shit. Drop this on the turn you make your winning play. Either it tanks a counterspell, leaving your follow-ups free to fly, or it resolves. Then you get to watch your foes agonize over whether to interact as you swing at them. Great for making blue players squirm as they sac 7 Islands just to get that Cyclonic Rift off.
Maybeboard Musings
I'll keep adding maybeboard considerations to these decks, as they're a good place to discuss the has-beens, coulda-beens and also-rans that didn't make the cut.
- Vexing Devil as a late-game value drop. With damage enhancement effects out, our opponents will think twice about taking the shot, and we get a strong lad for only .
- Fiery Emancipation. Talk about Gratuitous Violence's bigger, meaner brother. Unfortunately, comes with a steep price tag, too. If it ever gets reprinted, I might get to own it.
- Firebolt. This one's reusable, which might sway me to score it over Volcanic Hammer as a suitable replacement. More playtesting needed on that front.
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