Decklist
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After chirping in on a few threads around Alela, Artful Provocateur, I decided to put theoretical concepts into practice and made a deck.
What I've enjoyed about the deck mostly so far is that it doesn't feel overpowered or underpowered, so has that sweet spot of being competitive in almost any match-up, but still allows for enjoyable games against more casual decks.
I make a lot of focused decks that combo off from their commanders and often just end the game. So having a deck that ticks along and doesn't overwhelm opponents too quickly is honestly a breath of fresh air for me.
I've avoided "buff" cards that don't provide additional abilities. For example cards like Favorable Winds and Intangible Virtue. One of the reasons is that Skullclamp is great at drawing you cards, and giving your Faeries the additional toughness can be a negitive here.
But I do have some cards that give stats bonuses with Etchings of the Chosen, Grand Architect, Scion of Oona, Sorin, Solemn Visitor.
Grand Architect is amazing at casting your artifacts as you can just keep tapping the newly created blue Faeries to cast further artifacts. The ability gets around summoning sickness.
I really like giving your tokens lifelink in the deck as it allows you to go on the offensive with them, and not worry about blocking incoming attacks, as you can retain a healthy life total.
Odric, Lunarch Marshal, Sorin, Solemn Visitor, Teysa Karlov allow you to do this. Sorin, Solemn Visitor giving +1/0 means that you are attacking for at least 3 power each, so if you imagine you're are attacking with 5 Faeries you end up gaining probably 15 life. It's actually huge life swings.
The deck is quite resilient to a number of hate cards that exist in commander, and this is reflected in the fact that it runs some itself.
There is no graveyard recursion, so you don't have to worry about that and including Grafdigger's Cage, Planar Void and Scavenger Grounds are a nod to that.
The deck has a lot of enchantment based draw and one of the strengths of the deck is playing out artifact mana which triggers Alela to make more tokens and then often these tokens draw you more cards via Vampiric Rites, Military Intelligence, Dark Prophecy, Bident of Thassa, Coastal Piracy, Ephara, God of the Polis, Erebos, Bleak-Hearted, Kindred Discovery, Dire Undercurrents.
This just means that you have a steady stream of cards, and build up upon being able to cast more and more spells each turn.
Some of the more powerful interactions you can get with black is sacrifice and targeted removal on creatures using your own tokens as fuel.
Attrition allows you to target non-black creatures, and Grave Pact/Dictate of Erebos are great at causing your opponents to sacrifice their creatures when yours die.
There are a number of ways to kill your own creatures for advantages which helps with this. Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, Erebos, Bleak-Hearted, Vampiric Rites, Etchings of the Chosen can sacrifice your creatures.
Skullclamp is a great way to kill your own tokens as long as you don't have a buff card for toughness.
Reconnaissance has a duel purpose in that it allows you to attack into blockers and you can remove creatures that would die. But also due to how you can time the untapping during combat, you can in fact wait for damage to be applied and then untap during the combat damage step. It's basically a way of cheating vigilance. This just helps you also defend yourself.
Zacama
