[SCD] Breena the Demagogue

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Hawk
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Post by Hawk » 2 years ago

Breena, the Demagogue

So, this Commander seems to be getting a lot of flack - every single video/thread/post/guide I've seen has recommended replacing this bird with Felisa, Fang of Silverquill as the commander of the deck. And for sure, Felisa is a spicy and exciting +1/+1 counter and aristocrat Commander, one who can generate a ton of fuel and do interesting stuff. I am not at all in doubt that Felisa is a stronger, more synergistic Commander who has a lot more options in how you build them.

If you want a low-to-the ground aggressive commander, folks also point out that Tymna the Weaver is a better choice even if you just partner her with Ravos, Soultender, Prava of the Steel Legion, Tormod, the Desecrator, or some other folks to keep them in Orzhov. And again, for sure, Tymna does a better impression of a Coastal Piracy in the Command Zone.

But just like my stubborn insistence on making Sevinne, the Chronoclasm work, the weaknesses of Breena compared to her alternate just makes me want to make her work all the harder. I think her base deck does her no favors, loaded with terrible politics cards like Coveted Jewel and Secret Rendezvous instead of more powerful cards like Benevolent Offering and way-too-expensive creatures.

So how can we capitalize on Breena?

1) Breena is Edric, Spymaster of Trest-lite. I think folks get so hung up on her exceedingly wordy and confusing text box that they miss that you can easily bully the highest life opponent for an extra card each turn. You don't need to go full flying man.dec, but I think that means that Breena definitely wants a curve of low-drops with evasion that can sneak in there and start immediately drawing you cards and pumping your dudes. This is the biggest failure of the base Silverquill Statement deck; 23/26 creatures in the deck are the same CMC or a higher CMC than Breena. I think a good Breena deck wants a much, much lower curve.
2) Breena wants to pillowfort up: Attacking aggressively is only half the battle, especially since Breena will be drawing less cards than similar aggressive B/x commanders like Sygg or Yuriko or, yes, Tymna. Breena plays well with things that make you a less attractive target - you want strong rattlesnake effects in your deck and strong pillowfort cards. The base deck isn't too bad at this, but I'm particularly intrigued by pillowfort cards that are also threats when pumped, like Windborn Muse.
3) Breena wants Goad and other attack incentives like Curse of Shallow Graves, to force the issue. I wish we had better cards to do this than the Impetuses.

What Breena does not want is to Voltron out, which, again, people seem hung up on - if you just dump a ton of counters on her she becomes total removal bait. No, I think Breena wants creatures like Dreamstealer or even humble Vault Skirge on her side; great targets for her +1/+1 counter trigger that won't cause Breena herself to get immediately and constantly nuked.

Am I off base? Is there something else that might help Breena shine?

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TheAmericanSpirit
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Post by TheAmericanSpirit » 2 years ago

I think you need to somehow maintain four players in the game for as long as possible to maximize Breena, weirdly enough. In a 1v1 secnario, she does quite literally nothing besides be a flying 1/3 because her ability requires there to be multiple opponents. That being said, if you traded the pillowforts for fogs that you can use politically, you can force/incentivize attacks and then blank them to curry favor.

The coolest advantage of this strategy is that by playing fogs as opposed to onboard pillowfort effects, none of your opponents will really know which attacks you can actually blank or not. You can use this to encourage them to attack more often or to bluff (hopefully) saving your skin or someone else's. Then when the team is all swole or the life totals are low enough, you kill them all at once.
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Post by DirkGently » 2 years ago

I don't think secret rendezvous is terrible. Bit worse since we're also in black, but still. I definitely wouldn't say it's necessarily weaker than benevolent offering, especially with a commander that doesn't get benefit from tokens.


Also idk how coveted jewel is a political card, unless you want people to attack you.

Anyway, as far as the actual point:

Pillowfort seems fine. As a general rule, though, I'd rather run instant-speed removal as a deterrent, since it also enables disruption against various garbage while playing a fair strategy.

I don't think Breena really needs low cmc creatures. Except the turn she hits the board, she can just trigger herself. She swings as a 3/5 flyer on turn 4 with no ramp, and can usually attack either of two opponents. Plus she gives you a reasonable wincon. So I'd focus more on protecting her, getting her out early, and giving her haste - stuff like Lightning Greaves, Gemstone Caverns, Jeweled Amulet, and Hall of the Bandit Lord more than small evasive boys. Maybe if there's something Baleful Strix-adjacent in terms of power and "free-ness", but that's about it. Or cards like Stoneforge Mystic that are just good cards and might also be able to attack on turn 3 if someone is undefended.

Does that make her a target? Well sure, but that's because it's effective. People won't kill vault skirge because it sucks but that doesn't make it a good plan. Dreamstealer is a bit spicier, but that will make it more of a removal magnet because it's more effective. If we're playing an aggro deck, the only way to avoid hate is to be bad at what we're doing.

But regardless of that, I still wouldn't use many slots for low drops to trigger Breena. If you want to spread the counters around to reduce being targeted, then focus on creatures that get value from counters, not evasive creatures to trigger Breena. She doesn't scale beyond one....

wait...recalculating...

ok, nevermind, I'm an idiot (and also seriously her wording sucks). So in most circumstances you'll be able to trigger her twice per turn. That actually scales pretty rapidly then. So yeah, maybe that does give some credence towards running low-drops if they have good abilities. Hero of Bretagard, Needle Specter...Noosegraf Mob? Cruel Sadist, Walking Ballista, Hangarback Walker...those last ones are at least low-curve so they might be able to actually hit the turn Breena comes down, without being atrocious late-game topdecks like your average evasive 2-drop.
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Post by Mookie » 2 years ago

IMO, Breena, the Demagogue is fine. Note that you get multiple triggers if multiple opponents are attacked. Additionally, it's an attack trigger instead of a combat damage trigger, which makes it easier to pull off than Tymna the Weaver. Tymna is probably still stronger overall - you can draw cards off each opponent (instead of being capped), she isn't symmetrical, and she has partner - but pumping up your creatures can certainly be relevant. It's also possible to run stuff like Smothering Tithe or Spirit of the Labyrinth to make the card draw more asymmetric (while keeping the +1/+1 counters).

From a design perspective, I think Breena does a good job of moving the game along. Being the only aggro player at a table tends to be rough, since no other player has an incentive to pressure life totals. If Breena being in the game encourages your opponents to attack each other, that's pretty useful. Simultaneously, because she only triggers for attacking whoever has the most life, she makes it more likely that multiple opponents will stay in the game... which, in turn, gives you more people to attack for extra triggers.

I'll also note that Breena is inherently asymmetric in who can get triggers - you and the opponent with the least life will have two people to attack for triggers, while the other two opponents will only have one trigger at most. She's essentially Well of Ideas in the command zone. Admittedly, life totals can change as a result of attacks (meaning your opponents can potentially draw more cards), but that's relatively niche.

....no idea how I'd build Breena, but loading up a massive Hangarback Walker or Walking Ballista seems sweet. Pretty much anything with evasion (such as Breena) or lifelink is also a solid target.

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Post by pokken » 2 years ago

The thing you need to focus on with Breena, I think, is that she gets gigantic herself or makes other creatures huge threats. The issue with Edric is you need to play lots of weenies to enable him pretty much, you can't really just kill with Edric commander damage. It enables you to play a protect the queen strategy that Edric can't really do because he's not a threat on his own.

The other thing is since it only enables draw one card, people are encouraged to peck, not enabled to draw 10 cards and then combo out so much.

You're a lot more in control of it, and you can build your deck in such a way that you get more advantage off the draws than others.

A few things I notice:

1) A handful of decent persist creatures are really really good with her. Puppeteer Clique and Twilight Shepherd are both bananas since you can infinitely protect your board by cranking away and putting counters on them (or threaten to clique something over and over again every turn cycle). Lesser Masticore also is probably worth playing (if you play the combo). Cauldron of Souls is basically going to protect your board forever for the most part.

2) You're going to want to run a lot of removal. That's just what BW is great at in the format anyway, but you also get a huge advantage from being able to kill blockers and encourage attacks.

Because of how powerfully Breena controls combat, you will lose most often to alpha strikes with hoofdad and combos. So you'll want a ton of ways to break up combos and stop overwhelming combat damage (things like Comeuppance and Teferi's Protection will perform extra well).

2.5) You want almost no sweepers. Big clogged boards are great for Breena, since board stalls will generally favor her. I think I would play Living Death and Winds of Abandon only for sweepers. Possibly Cosmic Intervention to protect your own board state.

3) Playing cards like Duelist's Heritage that encourage attacks will also likely pay off. Maze of Ith and Thaumatic Compass // Spires of Orazca as well, since you can offer to let people draw for free and also attack for free yourself in a pinch.

4) Breena can protect planeswalkers and also turn the tokens they make pretty huge, so playing a subset of powerful walkers particularly the Sorins that make flying tokens will be a good idea. You'll get outsized value for Breena acting like a Ghostly Prison in the command zone that also protects walkers.

5) Things that pressure life totals like Kambal, Consul of Allocation will probably have an outsized impact as people will be attacking a lot.

Generally speaking if you're building it right, you're going to set it up so your winning turn is you killing one person with Voltron and one with combat damage. You will completely control the tempo of combat and win most games if you can prevent combos/hoofs.

Bottom line I think she's a really cool unique commander who presents a pretty powerful strategy without being something that people have to constantly kill - they can try to wait until she gets really big and then kill her, which is really a good place to be as a commander


edit: creatures and pillowforts

I don't think I would play any pillowfort stuff. Just removal and good creatures. The thing with her ability is your creatures will almost always be the biggest, people will almost never want to attack you with all their creatures (at least one will be going at the opponent to draw a card).

I would run maze effects I think and other than that try to just have good blockers.

So the best pillowfort there is like Twilight Shepherd as a giant body that they can't get past and you reset every turn. I would play mostly really powerful creatures like Serra Ascendant and Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet.

I really like Keeper of the Accord in this deck too since you're likely to play some long games and it makes a lot of bodies.

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Post by Cyberium » 2 years ago

I used to like Breena a lot, until I realized her ability cannot trigger once the table is down to a 1v1. If we were to use her, the deck should at least backed with a creature based strategy such as Voltron and tokens, even hate bears that'd limit your last opponent's abilities. Since Breena's ability is triggered base on opponents' life, it'd be alarming if your life is too high above others, so unless there's specific advantage in life drain, I'd vote against it early on to avoid hate, but they'd serve as good wincon towards mid-end (such as Twilight Prophet).

I've also seen situation where the whole table agreed to not trust a political deck right off the bat, even agreed to not attack each other until the said politician is gone. On that regard, Breena's card-draw is very tempting, especially if you add discard effects (such as Bottomless Pit) that'd whip opponents into attacking one another, similar to how Xantcha, Sleeper Agent decks do theirs.

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Post by folding_music » 2 years ago

Doesn't Breena seem like a good place to play tappy pieces like Giant Killer // Chop Down or Scepter of Dominance? and there's also things like Equipoise, which is so good when you intend to attack with a single flying creature! When you've got the chance to have an Orzhov deck which cares about the combat phase, might as well control the whole phase! I think I'd skip attempts at controlling individual life totals in favour of making it easy to attack unopposed.

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Post by Sinis » 2 years ago

I like that Breena kind of encourages that other players attack the person with the highest life total. Maybe it pushes everyone downwards towards an inevitable Exsanguinate/Debt to the Deathless/Torment of Hailfire. It's not my cup of tea, but it's a direction you can go in.

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Post by Hawk » 2 years ago

Cool discussion, thanks everyone! I do love the idea of Breena as ultimate fog commander, dispensing Batwing Brumes and Holy Days and whatnot to mess with other attacks and keep the game at 3+ players as long as humanly possible, while reserving real backbreakers like Comeuppance, Settle the Wreckage, and Inkshield for anyone who won't play ball and swing at your opponents. Back this with the threat of instant-speed surgical removal (something Orzhov is the king of) and you've got a cool deck.

I agree in hindsight that on-board forts don't feel as good and you don't need to go too nutso on low-cost attackers. I still think that attackers that scale well (such as Serra Ascendant, Nighthawk Scavenger, Walking Ballista, Hangarback Walker) and low-cost hatebear type creatures like Hushbringer have a great place in Breena, making her almost like a weird tempo commander who plays a few cheap threats and then uses instant-speed interaction to mess with the board.

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