Deckbuilder's Challenge XLII (Poll): Library of Rarities

{Comments}(Or: How I Died By Playing Lands Alone) (Or, or: How WOTC Warp the Design Space for Commander Players)

This deck is a soft-combo Legendary matters deck (The combo is The Cinematic Phoenix). To make the win feasible, I choose to bring the Dredge package (-) cheap creatures that bring themselves back (+) big reanimation spells (Entreat the Dead and such). So yes, it is a bad reanimator deck. Sol, Advocate Eternal serves only the purpose of making the deck 5C and making the Phoenix play consistent. If you are fortunate enough to have Leyline of Singularity in play (Start of game or Academy Rector) you can speed up the combo win since your utility/ramp creatures can help you activate the Phoenix's ability.

Many cards in the deck are in Secret Lair printings because of Keeper of the Secret Lair. Ignore the second ability of Rarity since it (she? I didn't watch the series) is only a glorified mana rock (yup I said it). Champions of Archery is mostly for the Join the Group side, where you can make something like Sisay or Sisay your commander so that you can repeatedly play them.

Also let's just pretend you can activate the second ability of The Secret Lair by saying "the secret word", okay? (If not, treat that card as something like City of Brass since I'm hurt that you would say no to that and you will probably die first if we play against each other )

{Comments} The 15 Wastes correspond to:

3x T-800 Terminator
3x Mishra's Buick
3x Agent Smith
3x T-1000
3x Staff of the Magi

The idea is to assemble Tron and wreak havoc with some of cinema's most iconic machine villains and a Buick. Cards like Agent Smith and Mishra's Buick function better with something to sacrifice to them so we can either use T-800 Terminator or the tokens produced by Urza's Factory.

{Comments}First of all: Nether watched My Little Pony, so I know nothing about this character. Nethertheless, I really liked Rarity when I first saw the card since I've dabbled in the design space of caring about rarities myself a few in the past.

As mentioned above though, I really wanted to have some sort of theme beyond just "play rares / mythics", and then I suddenly had an idea. At first I didn't expect it to work but yeah, it did work out in the end somehow.

So, when you look at the decklist, do you get the theme?



Yes, that's right. Every single card in the 99 comes right out of a Secret Lair product. Sure, this results in the deck not having a big mechanical focus - but it's rather scary how nicely the deck built itself nethertheless.. Also, let's be real here: If you don't like it, just give it a year and you'll have many new and exiting options to include