This week I’m back to update another of my personal decks from the Legends Legend Lady Caleria to her new, glow up modern day self. This deck tries to lock down combat by giving an array of pingers deathtouch and untapping them over and over, drawing cards each time and grinding its way to victory.
The Commander: Ohabi Caleria
As much love as I have for the OG, Ohabi is wildly better, from her actually castable CMV, offering a bonus for your tribe, and giving you built in card draw. I do wish she could still tap to deal damage herself, but it’s a sacrifice worth making. Because we want to be able to activate our tap abilities to control the board and stop our opponents from attacking us, blow up permanents, or just make mana, her untap ability is extremely valuable. This also means we have a solid shot at consistently having the mana up to pay for her card draw, which is equally important for creature heavy tribal decks.
The Ramp
We have mostly the usual suspects for ramp, artifacts like Sol Ring and Arcane Signet, sorceries like Nature’s Lore and Skyshroud Claim, but we also have a couple of creatures and enchantments up our sleeve as well. Silhana Starfletcher is an in tribe mana dork which is always nice, and Oracle of Mul Daya lets us both make extra land drops and play off of the top. Mirari’s Wake and Zendikar Resurgent fuel our engine, especially if we can stick a Seedborn Muse on top of them. We also have the very pricy Earthcraft to take advantage of our untappers for more ramp, but if you don’t have one in your collection you can swap in something like the much more reasonable Cryptolith Rite for nearly the same effect.
The Card Draw
In addition to our commander and Zendikar Resurgent we have a few other sources of draw, as well as pseudo draw from some scrying and a couple of tutors. Green Sun’s Zenith can either be ramp early with Dryad Arbor or fetch us something important later on, Idyllic Tutor, Steelshaper’s Gift, and Enlightened Tutor grab crucial enchantments or artifacts, while Worldly Tutor finds creatures. Path of Ancestry gives us consistent scrying, Realmwalker lets us cast Archers from the top of our library, and Beast Whisperer, Guardian Project, Vanquisher’s Banner, and Folk Hero give us unconditional draw.
The Utility
We have a nice suite of utility cards, but my personal favorite is Predator, Flagship. A bunch of our Archers only hit flying creatures and this gives us the option to yeet other people’s creatures into the sky to be destroyed like we’re skeet shooting, or be used politically to help out one of our opponents. On top of that, we have a whole bunch of ways to give out deathtouch, since turning our pings for 1 into lethal damage is what we’re ultimately looking for. Our dream scenario is equipping Brigid, Hero of Kinsbaile with something like a Basilisk Collar, as this immediately allows us to machine gun down as many attacking or blocking creatures as our opponents have, all while not even targeting. In addition we run Bow of Nylea, Gorgon Flail, Gorgon’s Head, Quietus Spike, Nightshade Peddler, and Saryth, the Viper’s Fang for deathtouch, and then the spicy Sword of Kaldra for when we’d rather just straight exile things. Archetype of Courage gives us first strike, which is particularly nasty to pair with deathtouch, Halana, Kessig Ranger lets us ping off utility creatures, and Nullmage Shepard and Aura Shards give us repeatable artifact and enchantment destruction.
Asceticism helps protect our vulnerable creatures, as does our suite of ways to give them indestructible with Flawless Maneuver, Heroic Intervention, and Rootborn Defenses, and we can both keep them safe in combat and give them pseudo vigilance with Reconnaissance by activating its ability after damage has been done but before combat has ended. Crackdown can be a nasty piece of work to lock down creatures further, and we don’t have to worry about our creatures that it hits since we will be untapping them with our Commander anyway. Finally we have a few additional pieces of removal and then Eternal Witness and Sun Titan to recur any of our important pieces that get blown up.
The Win Conditions
Now that we have shut down combat, how do we close out the game? Primarily we want to be stacking up damage as we go along with Greatbow Doyen for a maximum flavor win, but when our opponents don’t oblige us or can no longer be pinged since they have stopped attacking, we also have Mirror Entity to pump all of our mana in to and swing in for massive damage. If we wanted to we could always throw in a Squirrel Nest to combo with Earthcraft, but I came here to win with Archers damn it.
Thanks for joining us for our latest kitchen table Commander deck! Make sure to keep an eye out for the other decks in the series! If you have any questions or feedback, drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.
