Does Ashling The Pilgrim Deal Commander Dmg
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Godo, Bandit Warlord was infamous in the earlier days of Commander, but almost any commander can be given enough equipment to turn into the legendary defender. I prefer lean commanders like Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor or Ashling the Pilgrim for a Voltron plan, since their abilities let you pivot when the commander damage option is looking grim. Therefore, Bringer of the Red Dawn would be illegal in an Ashling the Pilgrim deck, but Ember Gale would be just fine, and so would Arid Mesa. If you want to use a split card, both sides of the split card must conform with the color identity of the Commander. Your deck can’t generate mana outside of your Commander’s color identity. I run Ashling in Neheb and love playing her whenever I can. As for the Blade of Selves. Etailli's trigger won't work due to he is legendary. You would have to sacrifice all but one of them before the attack trigger. As for the deck itself you could add a two card combo with Zealous Conscripts.
Conditions Allow – Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor
(Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor Art by Lucas Graciano)
Hello, welcome back, it’s good to see you again. This is Conditions Allow, where we take legendary creatures with downsides and build Commander decks to make them strengths. If you’ve been following the preview season for Modern Horizons, you know that the set contains cards that feature a few highly-anticipated characters from Magic’s past for the first time. Both Urza, the hero of questionable moral character, and Yawgmoth, the well-loved villain, will soon grace gaming tables everywhere. In recognition of the occasion, I wanted to go over another character of similar significance, and could think of no one better than Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor.
Printed for the first time in Commander 2018, Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor was first mentioned back in Alliances on the cards Varchild’s War-Riders and Varchild’s Crusader. Varchild’s War-Riders is particularly significant because it introduced Survivor tokens, which return as the primary focus for Varchild’s effects. Whenever she deals combat damage to a player, that player creates that many 1/1 red Survivor creature tokens, and when Varchild leaves the battlefield you gain control of all Survivors. Additionally, Varchild makes it so that Survivors your opponents control cannot block, and they cannot attack you or planeswalkers you control.
Looking on the Down Side
Because Varchild prevents the Survivor tokens from attacking you, this may not seem like much of a downside. In fact, when I first read her card, I thought it was all upside. You can suit your commander up with a bunch of Equipment to make a ton of tokens on your opponents’ battlefields. Your opponents can use those tokens to attack each other, but not to get in your way. Then, if Varchild is ever removed, you will get all of the tokens and continue to play an aggressive game without stumbling.
Unfortunately, this didn’t ever happen for me. Either Varchild was removed with a board wipe, thus killing all the tokens at the same time, or my opponents were able to sacrifice the Survivors for value of their own. I was essentially giving away free resources.
That experience may be indicative of my playgroup rather than the Commander community at large, but Meren of Clan Nel Toth and Muldrotha, the Gravetide are both among the most popular commanders of the last two years, while Teysa Karlov is among the most popular commanders of the last month. In addition, Skullclamp is played with over 41,000 decks, almost 20% of all the decks in the database. It is extremely likely that at least one opponent at a random table will be happy to grab some free sacrifice fodder.
With that in mind, I’m going to veer away from most of the cards recommended on Varchild’s EDHREC page and instead look at Group Hug strategies, Phelddagrif in particular. Phelddagrif is notorious for being a deceptively nice deck. Like Varchild, the happy purple Hippo gives away free resources in the form of cards and creatures before overwhelming the table with a massive combo. Let’s lean into that strategy to make Varchild even crazier than before.
Free Hugs
Many of the cards found on Phelddagrif’s page reflect a Group Hug strategy. Rites of Flourishing, for example, lets everyone draw extra cards and play extra lands, perfectly distilling exactly what a Group Hug deck wants to do. Those options won’t be available to us in mono-red, but lucky for us, there are plenty of artifacts to support this strategy too.
Howling Mine, Font of Mythos, and Temple Bell give everyone access to reliable card draw, while Ghirapur Orrery lets each player play extra lands. Mikokoro, Center of the Sea is a Temple Bell on a land, while Strionic Resonator can double Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor’s damage trigger.
There are also Group Hug cards unique to red, like Humble Defector. Mana Flare acts as a stand-in for Dictate of Karametra, and Varchild’s War-Riders is a cost-free way to give out more and more creature tokens. The most unique effect we can include, however, is Mana Cache. This enchantment gains counters based on how many lands a player leaves untapped at the end of the turn. Then, any player may remove those counters during their turn to add colorless mana to their mana pool. This adds a fun and powerful political tool to the game. You can make a deal to leave a certain number of lands untapped if the next player in order won’t attack you, or bully the rest of the table into playing slower than they’d like, to help someone behind on lands. Mana Cache can also make counter spells a little harder to use, since leaving mana open to cast them could give another player enough mana to deal with your interaction.
The final piece of our Group Hug puzzle is to ensure that everyone is properly using the toys we give them. It just won’t do to have everyone accumulating Survivor tokens and then not attack with them. In order to ensure combat happens, I’m including Fumiko the Lowblood, Goblin Diplomats, and Goblin Spymaster. Curse of Opulence can also encourage early game aggression, and has the added benefit of fitting nicely into our theme of giving away resources. Disrupt Decorum (and Goad in general) is another great way to make sure everyone is doing their part in combat. Not only does it force creatures to attack, it also prevents them from attacking us, a handy feature for ensuring we survive long enough to win.
Equal and Opposite Reactions
Speaking of winning, how will this deck try to do that? Most often, Group Hug decks seek to punish their opponents for taking the gifts we give. Cards like Psychosis Crawler and Treacherous Terrain will deal more and more damage as more cards are drawn and more lands put into play. While we could put Psychosis Crawler into this deck, we won’t ever really obtain the velocity needed to make it a true win condition.
Our tokens, on the other hand, just might do the job. While this version of the deck doesn’t have room for a ton of Equipment to pump Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor‘s power, we can still try to gain some advantage by taking back the tokens she gives away. In order to trigger her leaves the battlefield ability, we can include Conjurer’s Closet to flicker her during each of our end steps. For some redundancy, Erratic Portal and Barbarian Guides can bounce her back to our hand. As a small upside, Barbarian Guides can even make Varchild unblockable if any of your opponents are using snow-covered lands for their basics.
When repeatedly bouncing Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor, remember that she only stops Survivors your opponents control from blocking. You are free to use them defensively when under your control, even with Varchild on the field.
That said, it might be easier to win if our opponents keep the tokens. That’s right, this deck is going to try and win with Repercussion. With this enchantment in play, whenever a creature is dealt damage, it’s controller also takes that much damage. Not only does this make combat crazy damaging, even to the attacking player, but it also turns damage-based board wipes into highly efficient burn spells.
If each opponent has ten creatures on the field, Mizzium Mortars wins the game. Hour of Devastation only needs to hit eight creatures, while Blasphemous Act wins with four. Star of Extinction only needs two. Most decks will usually have a couple spare creatures hanging around; even spell-heavy strategies often rely on their commander. This is also where Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor really comes into her own. Alongside Varchild’s War-Riders, we can make sure each opponent has a couple of creatures out pretty much all the time. Most often, the smaller of these effects will win you the game, however. Following Mizzium Mortars with Jaya Ballard, Task Mage a few turns later is usually enough to win the game, and will make sure you don’t accidentally kill yourself too.
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Add in some ramp, draw effects, and a little bit of spot removal, and this is starting to look like a deck. No one will expect this kind of playstyle when you sit down with mono-red, but it is a lot of fun. I also enjoy playing this against a grindy table, as it forces creatures to attack and increases the pace of the game. This is also a lot of fun to try if you’ve ever wanted to end a game of Commander in a tie. Bonus points if you do it with Star of Extinction.
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That brings us to the end of this week’s Conditions Allow. Have you survived your experiences with Varchild? Did you build her as Group Hug, or Voltron, or a completely different path? What ways have you found to punish your opponents for all the tokens you give away? Let me know in the comments!
Ben Doolittle
Ben was introduced to Magic during Seventh Edition and has played on and off ever since. A Simic mage at heart, he loves being given a problem to solve. When not shuffling cards, Ben can be found lost in a book or skiing in the mountains of Vermont.
When you hear the word “midrange” what do you think of? Personally, I have visions of green-black-something decks that make a lot of one-for-one trades with a little card advantage while playing the best threats they can find in the format. Decks like this are often referred to as “Rock” decks. Other color combinations can build a very similar deck (see red-white Boat Brew from Lorwyn-Shadowmoor-Shards of Alara Standard), but the basic principle is the same.
Rather than trying to kill the opponent before they can react or lock down the board and/or control the stack, the deck looks to make positive trades and grind out a win through playing with superior quality cards. Midrange decks usually win in the Red Zone, but they do it on their own terms and are usually doing it with a giant monster or two that already gave them some value before attacking.
You’ll see more midrange decks than any other type in a typical Commander group. Midrange is the “goodstuff.dec” archetype. Goodstuff.dec jams the best acceleration, removal, and threats you can find into a pile and plays with it. There might be small inherent synergies that play well together and there might not be.
Having a theme does not necessarily exclude a deck from being a midrange deck. I have a Ghave, Guru of Spores token-themed deck that I consider much closer to a midrange deck than an aggro deck at this point because it grinds much more than the original Rith, the Awakener ever could hope to with all the Grave Pact effects and recursion. There are lots of other routes to pursue as well, and I’ll touch on some of them below.
Colors to Choose
In tournament and kitchen table Magic, the best colors for midrange involve some combination of green, black, and white or blue. This holds true for Commander as well.
Green gives you the best creatures and land-based acceleration, which are key to getting your powerful cards out in time to slow down another player’s aggressive start or start pressuring the combo and control players. Black gives you the most powerful tutoring effects and reanimation. The tutors let you play silver-bullet answers without diluting the strength of the deck and consistently get your best cards into the game. The reanimation effects in black, when coupled with the return-to-hand effects available in green, make it easy to reuse your best cards again and again. White and blue both provide strong value creatures while providing other means of dealing with threats (white sweepers, blue countermagic), and generally shore up the weaknesses of green and black.
The other point to consider when selecting your colors for midrange is which multicolor cards you might want to use. Vindicate is good in any format, as is Angel of Despair. Coiling Oracle and similar enters the battlefield creatures are often the cornerstone of a good midrange strategy.
With a midrange good stuff deck, you can end up choosing your deck before your commander quite easily. Even thought you might be tempted to put all your favorite cards in a deck and then pick a general, I strongly recommend you pick a general that has inherent synergy with all those cards and cut the ones that don’t have the same synergy as the rest of the deck. Playing goodstuff.dec will get there sometimes, but you’ll find the deck much more consistent if you build around your commander to some degree and take advantage of the abilities they provide to you.
On Monocolor Midrange
Does Ashling The Pilgrim Deal Commander Dmg 1
Midrange can be done with mono-color decks, despite no single color really having all the tools that a multicolor deck will have. To do midrange in mono-color effectively, you lean more on the card advantage engines available to you in that color.
White midrange tends to play with sweepers and breaking the symmetry somehow or locking down the board with various rules-setting cards. Blue draws a ton of cards to keep the threats coming while maintaining positive tempo. Black plays with undercosted cards with drawbacks and mitigates them with the 40 life in the format. Green just powers out fatties and rides them to victory.
Unfortunately for those Red mage out there, midrange is not the best strategy for red in Commander. All of the ramping effects available to red are one shot, which means you’re giving up cards to play threats faster. You can’t afford to do that while playing a midrange deck: a large percentage of your answers will be one-for-one or two-for-one at best (especially in red). If you want to play red, you’ll find yourself being pushed into the aggro role or the control roll by keeping the board clear while you attack with one or two big threats.
Regardless of the color you choose, monoc-olor midrange is doable, but I’d strongly recommend starting with green and at least one other color to truly get the archetype running on all cylinders. You can rely on artifact mana to make up for the loss of green acceleration, but that opens you up to getting your tempo shut down by any kind of artifact destruction. It’s not a good place to be in.
How to Build Your Curve
Building the curve for a midrange deck is all about exploiting the power of mana ramping and finding the most efficient effects at a particular mana cost. Fortunately for those of you looking to play midrange, starting at 40 life rather than 20 life makes it much easier to spend the first few turns setting up your mana to do ridiculous things starting on turn 4 and beyond.
Starting with converted mana costs one through three, you want to focus on spells that will set up your midgame. The most common thing to do is play mana ramping spells, especially ones that give you a two-for-one like Cultivate and Kodama’s Reach. Sticking to land-based acceleration lets you avoid the potentially ugly issues of having your acceleration removed by a random sweeper at a crucial point later. Very few mass land destruction spells see play in Commander, so as long your group doesn’t go for the mass LD route, you’ll be all set.
Four- and five-cost are where you start to hit a bit more diversity in your spells. If you’re going for sweepers to generate card advantage, you’ll likely have a few in this range to deal with creatures. If you opted for card draw, this is where you want to have a few of those effects. This is where you start to generate a little card advantage alongside the mana acceleration. Fortunately, this is where the card advantage cards start to get good. You can Skyshroud Claim for two untapped Forests, or Wrath of God or Damnation, or stick a Jace, the Mind Sculptor and start drawing cards like crazy. Once you hit five you’ll have the occasional threat as well, but the good stuff mostly starts at six.
Six and above is where things start to get spicy, and you see the premier midrange creatures for Commander. The Titans from Magic 2011 and Magic 2012 are perfect examples. They have dangerously large bodies, and they do more than just beat. If you’re going for goodstuff.dec, you should definitely have all the Titans you can play in your colors. Look for more cards like them, and you’ll be on the right track. You want every threat you play to be a must-answer card, along with providing value when it enters the battlefield or dies.
Recommended Commanders
Here’s a quick list of possible commanders for both good stuff midrange and themed midrange generals and a couple notes on what you should include:
White
Does Ashling The Pilgrim Deal Commander Dmg 2
- Hokori, Dust Drinker – While not on my list of commanders to play any time soon, Hokori is excellent at denying resources to your opponent while you break the symmetry.
- Iona, Shield of Emeria – Locking an opponent out of a color will win you games, but you’re better off cheating her into play somehow rather than paying retail.
- Reya Dawnbringer – Bringing back any creatures you’ve lost without paying for it is a great way to make sure you stay ahead. Even better if those creatures have enters-the-battlefield triggers.
Blue
Does Ashling The Pilgrim Deal Commander Dmg Review
- Heidar, Rimewind Master – While his body isn’t super impressive, being able to bounce a permanent every turn is pretty nice, giving you a solid tempo boost while you get in with other threats.
- Meloku the Clouded Mirror – A fantastic way to generate a board advantage when the game goes long.
- Rayne, Academy Chancellor – Last week Doug Linn mentioned Rayne as a possible aggro commander. I think she’d be much better as the leader of a more midrange style build of deck with good blue threats backed up with countermagic for removal.
Black
- Anowon, the Ruin Sage – A very good midrange choice since he can lock down the board for you while you deploy your other Vampires and take control of the game.
- Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief – Repeatable removal that pumps is a fantastic way to keep yourself ahead into the late game after deploying her in the midgame.
- Geth, Lord of the Vault – Evasion and a reusable reanimation ability like Chainer, Dementia Master, without his drawback. He even provides an alternate win condition in the milling ability.
- Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni – Are you getting the idea that great black midrange generals either kill everyone’s creatures or reanimate them yet?
- Sheoldred, Whispering One – A less restrictive, bigger, better Anowan.
- Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon – The one exception to the “kill creatures or reanimate” them rule, because he has such a good clock all by himself that he can be backed up with just ways to control the board and other efficient creatures.
- Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed – Monetarily expensive, but oh so good at providing exactly what you want in a midrange deck: powerful recursion.
Red
- Ashling the Pilgrim – She’s one of the very few commanders you can run as midrange because she provides solid card advantage while being an aggressive beater. The “99 Mountain Ashling” deck definitely qualifies as midrange.
- Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs – Creating creatures whenever an opponent attacks you lets you be aggressive while still having some defense, and you’d be surprised how often people will send a creature somewhere else to avoid paying or giving you a token.
- Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker – Great midrange guy when combined with enters-the-battlefield creatures, but often played as a combo general, so be ready for people to try and hate you out.
Green
- Azusa, Lost but Seeking – Quite popular after Sam Black posted a decklist designed around powering out turn 4 Eldrazi.
- Kamahl, Fist of Krosa – A savage beater that only gets better the more mana you have available.
- Molimo, Maro-Sorcerer – Getting bigger and more dangerous with every land you have out plays naturally into green’s strengths.
Multicolor
- The Invasion and Planar Chaos Dragons – All of the Dragons do a great job of giving you something at a big discount whenever you can hit a player, and the decks built around them play very much like a midrange deck most of the time.
- Ghave, Guru of Spores – Having built the deck, I can confidently say that Ghave functions extremely well as in a midrange token based strategy. Almost all the commanders that give you access to black can play the role well when combined with Grave Pact effects and Aura Shards.
- Glissa, the Traitor – Another one mentioned in comments on my aggro article, the Evil Glissa is a great way to grind out card advantage in traditional Rock style.
- Kresh the Bloodbraided – One of the poster boys for midrange, Kresh is all about grinding out advantage by offing both yours and your opponent’s threats.
- Malfegor – The ODD (Original Demon Dragon) does wonders for making sure you stay ahead on the board against slow opponents while destroying anyone who dumped their hand too early.
- Mayael the Anima – A lot of people consider Mayael to be either aggro or control. I personally think of her as a midrange general since she plays best as a combination of the two.
- Merieke Ri Berit – Merieke can be a control general with very few other creatures, or she can be a 3-drop that steals your opponent’s best creature while you beat down with your other guys.
- Nath of the Gilt-Leaf – Getting free creatures for forcing opponents to discard is a fantastic advantage – one you can easily exploit in a Rock shell.
- Oona, Queen of the Fae – Similar to other token generators, but be aware many people play her as a combo kill.
- Rosheen Meanderer – Rosheen combines very well with additional ramp to let you pay silly amounts on X spells, quickly making them incredibly broken.
- Sapling of Colfenor – She provides card advantage while being extremely difficult to kill.
- Sygg, River Cutthroat – A card advantage engine that combines with your desire to get in for some damage every turn and profits off your opponents hurting each other.
- Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter – Tailor-made for midrange, letting you take advantage of your dying creatures and make sure your opponents lose them too or just get hit for tons.
- Wort, the Raidmother – Similar to Rosheen, but requires more tokens. She’s a fantastically fun general in my experience.
- Wrexial, the Risen Deep – Getting free spells for attacking is exactly what a midrange deck wants.
Ending in the Middle
That’s all for midrange discussion. Next week we’ll talk about all the different ways to play control in Commander. Until then, remember two-for-ones can win games.