Glissa's Midrange Meat Grinder
Introduction
There's something about Glissa that makes you want to build around her, play the deck, enjoy the deck, regardless of whether it's stunningly good, abysmal or anywhere in between. Is it that she's a commander that, against all color pie trends, has artifact synergy? Yes. Is it that she has a combination of some of the strongest combat keywords? Also yes. But what gets it for me is that there is no 'solved' build for her. She's remarkably versatile; it's totally possible to do elf tribal, deathtouch tribal, phyrexian vorthos, stax, combo, attrition, or any other number of possibilities, and the beauty is that, while most Glissa decks run some of the same bits and pieces, there's almost nothing that's absolutely canon for every build, and I love that. You can mix and match bits and pieces of different strategies and make it a deck that's pretty well your own.
Since picking her up I've tried a few differing builds; the first was a specific artifact/eggs recursion build, and it was a little inconsistent and durdly. I then moved towards a more dedicated Birthing Pod build. That has been a strong option in general. It's a very strong card, and I like running it in a deck that doesn't necessarily have the ability to make it obscene. Going all in on Pod is tenuous, because, well, it's not in the command zone. I can find it, sure, but there's never any guarantee.
So now, after a ton of brewing and attempting to fit a lot into 100 cards without overly compromising, I've got a fairly versatile toolbox build that covers off a few areas:
- A Birthing Pod chain that's capable of keeping presence on field and solving various game states.
- A package of eggs that I can recur for various areas of value, and a way to do so easily with Salvaging Station.
- Several ways to continuously abuse Glissa's trigger, through both combat and non combat scenarios
- Some tempo choices that enable me to start chopping down life totals quickly without compromising resources.
- A support suite that includes protection, recursion and removal in a variety of contexts.
There's a lot going on there, and it's not been easy to keep all of these balanced and working, but I believe the deck is now at a level where it's fun to play, relatively successful and has multiple avenues it can take towards a win. These are generally the conditions I look for with my decks; functional, fun, versatile, non-repetitive.
I won't for a minute pretend that this is the definitive Glissa build I actually believe there isn't one, really. This list is really the culmination of my brews around the commander and leveraging the angles that I like with her at the helm.
Decklist
Decklist
Approximate Total Cost:
Deck Philosophy
Essentially, the general concept of the deck is to grind the table down with value. There's enough synergies, reusable value, draw, ramp, and threats in the deck to keep us in the running for most games. I'm going to be honest and say that, while there are some fairly heavy games this deck can wrestle through, it's not without its weaknesses, and in particular will likely struggle with combo decks and spellslinger decks as we are relatively low on instant speed responses. We're not entirely without options, but they are limited in number.
This has probably been the most challenging deck I've ever wanted to build - not so much in terms of acquiring cards, the challenge has been to make it do what I want it to, but without losing focus, spreading myself too thin, just plain durdling, achieving nothing, you name it. It's been really easy to add in 'goodstuff' and let it loose, but that generally hasn't been effective; the build wants quite a high level of focus and balance, and that can be really hard to fine tune. I still don't feel like I'm quite there, but it does a little of everything I want it to for now, and there's a couple of bits and pieces I may look at adding moving forward, as the deck is more a vibe than a definitive list.
It's probably worth noting here that I'm fairly well aware of combo options for Glissa. My deckbuilding philosophy really doesn't leave any room for things like Mindslaver locks, Genesis Wave wins or Death Cloud stax brutality, so this list is probably not as cutthroat as it could be. That being said it does fine for me and I'm happy to stick within the realms of what I find enjoyable and wrestle out a win from there.
Strategy
In terms of gameplay, Glissa is in an interesting place; she's not Zurgo Helmsmasher. She doesn't want the board entirely clear. It's not entirely out of the question to say that she's slightly political; you do want some creatures in play, and you do want your opponents to establish some board state. Let's put it this way - if you continually flatten the board, your value train stops as your opponents will stop developing their board at all. So there's a sweet spot, where we want to control the pace of the game, destroy creatures as we can (and as deserved - pick the biggest threats at the table and you avoid archenemy), and generate card advantage where you can while we advance our board, answer threats and drop life totals.
Early game we are all about colour fixing. We want ASAP so that we can get Glissa in play. The sooner we get this the sooner we have our neck protected. From here, we want to start getting some board presence, and it doesn't hugely matter if that's in the context of eggs or creatures. Eggs are nice as they cantrip and we can recur them, creatures I've picked to generate card advantage or come with added value (and some of them we can recur). At this point in the game combat is fine, although as boards establish I try not to with Glissa; save her for chump blocking, but also make sure no one is forced to remove her, as we can keep our hand considerably more full with her on the field, and that helps us ramp, draw and find what we need.
Mid game, we should have options in the graveyard, an avenue of value in either combat options, Birthing Pod, Salvaging Station or elements of control like Rankle, Master of Pranks, Walking Ballista or Viridian Longbow. Hopefully, we still have Glissa in play, and hopefully there's a board to swing into to keep our value train going. We can force the issue if needed with Clackbridge Troll, Forbidden Orchard and self contained value engines like Memory Jar.
Late game we're looking at driving the nail home with either superior forces in combat or life loss strategies. Marionette Master can easily finish a table off, especially if we can pump her to a higher power, and we can easily get rid of a lot artifacts. Most will do it themselves, and Ashnod's Altar is there if they can't. We have a few combat modifiers in Thunderfoot Baloth, Rancor and End-Raze Forerunners can drop life totals easily too. Ultimately, this is going to look different every game, but there should be plenty of value in the deck to drive home a win.
It's also worth mentioning that there is combo material here. Sometimes a game just needs to end, and if you have what you need you can finish the game on the spot with Nim Deathmantle, Ashnod's Altar, either Blood Artist or Marionette Master and either Myr Battlesphere or Wurmcoil Engine. Easy enough to understand; with Deathmantle equipped to one of the latters, you sacrifice to the altar enough to create , pay to return the creature to play, which creates more tokens, rinse and repeat, and for each iteration life is lost. I generally don't leverage combo heavily here, but the option is there as a long-game-kill-switch. At 4 cards, I'm happy enough that it's not a particularly easy combo to put together, which satisfies my usual desires as a deck builder.
When things go wrong, usually what we want to do is board wipe. There are a few here, and some of them favour us quite nicely. We can keep particular parts of our board with All is Dust, Pernicious Deed and Living Death, and there are a few spot removal options too. Ultimately though, this build pretty well relies on playing a careful game. This isn't a drag race, we're not hitting top gear asap. We want to hit 4th gear and cruise, and be able to chop down and lose some momentum if we have, but ideally we don't want to rebuild from scratch. So the idea is to hold back a little and use a light touch. attack who deserves it and play the table to death. Ultimately, this does often require some clever piloting, but that's what I was aiming with the deck. What fun would there be if the deck piloted itself?
Further Developments
There's always considerations for further playtesting or building. Here's what's down for consideration at present:
- Toxic Deluge (card needs a reprint to drop it's price before I'll pick it up though)
- Sword of Feast and Famine (see above)
- Syr Konrad the Grim
- Assassin's Trophy
- Torment of Hailfire - It's an interesting card here in that it doesn't have to be a game-ender. I have a copy spare, it just isn't in here at present.
- Many, many more - that's what I love about this commander, there's so many damn options.
Thanks!