For a lot of us, we initially read Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist as a great way to support an Equipment theme and get in for some Voltron style action.
However this deck is more about using Auras instead and in very tricky ways.
The thing with Auras is that there are not many ways in Magic to move them from one target to another. Once you selected the target on casting, usually that is it for the rest of the game.
With Ardenn you can choose any number of Auras and Equipment and move them onto another target at the beginning of combat.
There are a 11 enchant land auras that allow you to get additional mana out of lands.
You can tap to use these enchanted lands before combat and then with Ardenn move all those Auras onto another untapped land allowing you to tap it for lots more mana the rest of the turn.
There is also a set of "Curse" Auras which target players for basically detrimental effects.
Commander is often an ever changing game with opponents getting stronger or weaker depending on swings.
This deck can change the targets of the Curses to balance the game out in a number of ways.
Curses
There are a number of Aura subtypes called "Curses" and by their name sake you can imagine that they normally do something detrimental.
They enchant a player, selected on cast. Normally of course once they are cast you cannot change the player it is attached to.
With Ardenn however you can change the player of some or even all of them.
This is where threat assessment becomes vital and you can balance the game out accordingly.
Politics also plays a role.. "If you don't attack me with your creatures, I won't select you for the curses" type table talk becomes a major factor in decisions.
I've only selected curses that I think have a big enough impact on a player and the game.
Overwhelming Splendor makes creatures 1/1 with no abilities and Curse of Death's Hold gives players creatures -1/-1.
With Ardenn you can keep changing the target of these so that you are constantly killing opponents creatures on alternative turns.
Maybe a player has a big draw deck so you select them for Curse of Fool's Wisdom.
Curse of Exhaustion targets the player most likely to cast multiple spells each turn.
Cruel Reality is indeed a cruel reality for the player who has to sacrifice a creature or planeswalker each turn.
Curse of Thirst is a way to start killing players.
These are not Curses but Darksteel Mutation and Song of the Dryads can nullify opponents permanents and with Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist ability to move them you can reselect the most threatening targets for the stage of the game.
Enchant Lands
There are some that simply allow you to tap a land for "two" mana; Gift of Paradise, New Horizons, Weirding Wood.
If you move multiples of them onto one land then this doesn't accumulate in anyway to give you more mana.
However there are some that in addition to what the land is tapped for will add some additional mana on top of that.
These are Dawn's Reflection, Fertile Ground, Market Festival, Overgrowth, Utopia Sprawl, Verdant Haven, Wild Growth, Wolfwillow Haven.
When you do move them onto another land with Ardenn you will get the accumulated effect of additional mana.
This is a very powerful interaction to give you lots more mana in your turn post combat.
Being as though you want to be stacking these onto a single lands the deck has two indestructible lands in Cascading Cataracts and Darksteel Citadel.
This way later on in the game (or early if you draw them) you can target them and feel much more secure that they won't be targeted by a Strip Mine or whatever.
There is the a combo with Squirrel Nest + Earthcraft creating infinite 1/1 tokens.
Earthcraft can be sensational with stacking the additional mana Auras onto a basic land so that you can tap your creatures to get all the additional mana!
Given that you might not have put the Auras onto a basic land in the early game, Ardenn has this great ability that you can play a basic much later on in the game to get the advantages of Auras and Earthcraft.
Enchantress
Because so many of them are Auras, there is even Kor Spiritdancer and Sram, Senior Edificer to get extra draw.
Being as you draw so many cards there are ways to get extra lands into play off Burgeoning, Exploration, Dryad of the Ilysian Grove, Azusa, Lost but Seeking, Oracle of Mul Daya.
Equipment
It must be noted that even though Ardenn can move any number of Auras and Equipment, he can only select one target for those.
This means that you can't choose to shift both Curses and enchant lands in the same combat step. You have to do one or the other.
There are only three equipment in the deck, because most of the time you are going to want move enchant land Auras for the additional mana, rather than equipping your creatures.
However the ones I've selected have major synergy with the rest of the deck so are worthwhile.
You can choose to keep doubling up "enchantress" creatures or maybe additional lands into play creatures.
There are also a select few ETB creatures with Wood Elves, Yavimaya Dryad for land ramp and Skyclave Apparition, Knight of Autumn for removal.
Armored Skyhunter is an awesome new creature that can put Auras and Equipment directly into play from the top six cards of your library. Put a Cruel Reality into play for free? Yes please. If you make copies of it then you can really dig deep into the deck.
Now you can also make some copies of Ardenn with Helm of the Host which means that you would be able to move Auras and Equipment to multiple targets each turn.
This is where you can choose to move Curses and move the enchant lands Auras potentially in a single combat step.
A very interesting interaction you could do is move the enchant Aura lands in between lands with each additional Ardenn trigger and use Sigarda's Aid to flash in Auras and Enchantments during the combat step as you tap one land for all that additional mana, and then move them again.
Helm of the Host does trigger at the beginning of combat and so does Ardenn which means that if you move the Helm witj Ardenn you won't get a copy of the new target until your next turn as the "beginning" of combat has already occurred.
This just needs to be kept in mind if you are wanting to change targets.
Blade of Selves also has a steep equip cost of which Ardenn will help with.
You can create another two tokens of a creature with three opponents but only until end of combat. This is where the ETB creatures are used best.
There is a combo with Reyhan, Last of the Abzan equipped with Blade of Selves.
SPOILER
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Blade of Selves will create multiple copies of Reyhan, each of which will have their own counter-placing abilities that will trigger when the copies will die to the legend rule. It's like when you kill two Blood Artists at the same time; you get four triggers because both Artists see each other dying and themselves dying. With Reyhan, it looks like this:
Three opponents: 3 Reyhan abilities * 2 dead Reyhans * 3 counters = +18/+18, immediately boosting Reyhan to 21/21.
Three opponents: 3 Reyhan abilities * 2 dead Reyhans * 3 counters = +18/+18, immediately boosting Reyhan to 21/21.
Stony Silence is in the deck because the deck doesn't have many artifacts. With Ardenn you can get around not being able to activate the equip costs by simply moving them at the beginning of combat.
Protection
The deck is full of ways to protect your permanents.
Greater Auramancy and Sterling Grove give your other enchantments shroud. If you have both of these in play then they give shroud to each other making them untargetable as well.
If your meta has lots of board sweepers then Flawless Maneuver, Heroic Intervention, Teferi's Protection are going to serve you well.
If you do get hit with a sweeper then Replenish is perfect for putting all your enchantments back into play.
Also because this is a major draw deck you will end up discarding cards due to hand size a lot of games. Use this to your advantage by discarding the more costly enchantments like Curses, with the plan of drawing into Replenish to bring them into play at a much reduced cost.
How to Win?
At it's essence this is a storm deck as you get to generate so much mana and draw so many cards each turn. You will just overwhelm your opponents with card advantages.
There is the Squirrel Nest + Earthcraft combo as a way to actually finish opponents.
But you will also just grind opponents out of resources with the Curses and ways to remove cards with the Equipment creating token copies of Skyclave Apparition and Knight of Autumn.
Finale of Devastation can also be used for a giant lethal attack.
Reyhan, Last of the Abzan
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Don't be fooled by Reyhan, Last of the Abzan as the selected partner. I literally just needed the color fixing into black and green for the colors I wanted to run.
I would dearly like to try some of the new partners with Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist, however without new bi-colored commanders printed we are stuck with what we got.
So unfortunately there are only a few select cards that Reyhan, Last of the Abzan can be used for advantages.
I would dearly like to try some of the new partners with Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist, however without new bi-colored commanders printed we are stuck with what we got.
So unfortunately there are only a few select cards that Reyhan, Last of the Abzan can be used for advantages.
Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist // Reyhan, Last of the Abzan - Enchantress with Auras
Approximate Total Cost:
Zacama
