Queen Breena's Planeswalkin' Jazz Club

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pokken
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Post by pokken » 2 years ago

Queen Breena's Planeswalkin' Jazz Club



This is a heavily work in progress deck based off of sticking planeswalkers and defending them with combat tricks and giant blockers while encouraging everyone to fight amongst themselves. Breena's text box is a mess of weird pilowfort/group sluggish effects that I believe will play somewhat like a Ghostly Prison in the command zone. People should be encouraged to attack other people with at least some of their guys.
  • Combat Tricks and Mazes
  • Planeswalkers and mild Proliferation
  • Monarch
  • Ramp from Behind!
This is the next evolution of my Mangara superfriends deck, which struggled with finding enough decent planeswalkers to play, and hopefully will remain 2 colors where the PW selection is medium-bad but at least I don't have to play planeswalker deck walkers to fill my slots out :)

https://deckbox.org/sets/2919250

All kinds of cards I'm missing - I was blown away to find I did not own a Anguished Unmaking so I had to slop a Vindicate in there, and I'm missing some pedestrian but really good in this archetype walkers like Sorin, Grim Nemesis who I just could not find a reasonably priced copy of.

So hit me up with any non-mana rock ideas. :)

The shortlist of stuff I will find room for when something earns a cut or I find one:

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kraus911
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Post by kraus911 » 2 years ago

Was going to suggest Invulnerability because buyback, but I don't think that protects your walkers which is prob more important than your life total. Imagine why this is why Selfless Squire is absent from your list. Change of Heart though might do work, especially if you're often leaving mana up for combat tricks. Recruit the Worthy is an expensive 1/1, but also a good emergency chump.

Was looking up flash cards and came upon Saving Grace which is a fog as long as you have a token or some poor guy to stick it on.

This is the kind of deck I want to put Humility into because it doesn't affect your Gideons and your Sorin emblem gives you an edge, but I also get you want interactivity rather than a static wall of enchantments.

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pokken
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Post by pokken » 2 years ago

Had one good game with this deck. One stalled bad on Mana missing black for most due to a bad mulling choice on my part.

The good game was legit. Breena got people going and pressured hard. Her counters built up really fast and proliferating with her was nice. I lost to a cedh sram deck after getting all my removal wheeled which sucked.

Overall the deck ran well and creature fun states. Looking forward to playing it more.

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pokken
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Post by pokken » 2 years ago

So I was thinking as I played this deck that the planeswalkers are...not amazing in it. Anyone have thoughts for an alternate theme that might make good sense in those 16 or so cards?

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Ruiner
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Post by Ruiner » 2 years ago

pokken wrote:
2 years ago
So I was thinking as I played this deck that the planeswalkers are...not amazing in it. Anyone have thoughts for an alternate theme that might make good sense in those 16 or so cards?
Breena seems really good for infect creatures since she can make them scarier pretty fast. Maybe that's an angle to try? You could feel free to swing out really aggressively and have your tricks for your own defense.

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pokken
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Post by pokken » 2 years ago

Ruiner wrote:
2 years ago
Breena seems really good for infect creatures since she can make them scarier pretty fast. Maybe that's an angle to try? You could feel free to swing out really aggressively and have your tricks for your own defense.
Ew :) Interesting thought, but with Breena's abilities we want to encourage people to leave us alone not encourage them to egg our house. ;)

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duducrash
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Post by duducrash » 2 years ago

I have two ideas, don't know how good they are but I'll share and maybe you can build something out of them.

first keeping the deck together. Orzhov walkers work nice with tokens. Maybe a token subtheme would work nice, there are plenty of Orzhov walkers that generate tokens. A few lilianas and the elspeths for example. Anointed Procession gets nasty real fast. it would still be a superfirends deck.


Second is from this line
pokken wrote:
2 years ago
This is the next evolution of my Mangara superfriends deck, which struggled with finding enough decent planeswalkers to play, and hopefully will remain 2 colors where the PW selection is medium-bad but at least I don't have to play planeswalker deck walkers to fill my slots out
Another strixhaven general that would fit this descrition is Mila, Crafty Companion // Lukka, Wayward Bonder . Boros walkers would also be a planeswalker deck in colors that don't excel at that. could be an area to explore still keeping the mangara spirit alive

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pokken
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Post by pokken » 2 years ago

I won a game with this deck tonight - largely because the Toralf, God of Fury // Toralf's Hammer player incorrectly chose to leave me alive and I 1v1'd him for the win. It was a rough game where the Scorched Ruins + Lotus Vale combo held me in a very rough spot most of the game because I just could not hit lands.

The only real bright spot was when I popped Scholarship Sponsor to ramp myself 2 against Toralf, which is pretty much what that card is all about.

I think part of the problem honestly is that my sequencing is just iffy in a lot of areas, but in general the planeswalkers are just struggling to be relevant in a lot of games.

IN this game, Toralf blasphemous acted everyone almost out and killed my Arena Rector which let me get Karn which carried me to victory, but honestly it's hard to make any judgments based on such an egregious misplay.

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pokken
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Post by pokken » 2 years ago

Had a pretty boss game with this deck vs xantcha, yidris wheels, and vaevictis the dire. Essentially was able to hold everyone off most of the game with multiple made effects and breena encouragement.

I eventually made the call to let yidris try to go off which decided the game since I had a teferis protection and was able to not take any damage from his wheels while everyone got knocked down to 10 except me. I untapped and killed yidris with commander damage, then plopped a pile of Planeswalkers and eventually drained asmadi out.

It came down to me and xantcha who had drawn like 15 cards off a decree of pain and slammed a bunch of stupid rakdos fatties. He eventually was able to kill the second of my three mazes and jam a bunch of combat damage into.....inkshield. I untaped and recast breena then akromas willed for lethal.

He showed me rakdos charm which would have done 15 or so to me which I showed comeuppance for lol.

This game did come down a pretty hilarious topdeck of tevesh szat while he had given me xantcha that drew me into the inkshield.

Overall the walkers were real good this game too, even slow blink kaya who was able to keep him from saccing kokusho on me for a turn. Karn and big kaya were solid too, and Liliana last hope did a nice job weakening xantcha so it couldn't swing through my board.

The mix of combat shenanigans, removal and mazes is just so darn good at controlling the board with breena that people are really wary of attacking me.

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pokken
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Post by pokken » 2 years ago

Got a couple games in with this deck last night for the first time in a while. It won 1/2.

The first game was a 3 player game, and I found out that Breena is quite awkward in 3 players - makes it much harder to get people to swing. Thankfully, I was able to do my The Chain Veil with some protection dance, leading to a beautiful sequence where:

1. The Mill player scarab god deck filled everyone's bins
2. I ultimatted Ajani Steadfast
3. I cast Command the Dreadhorde which nailed a Defiant Bloodlord and Verdant Sun's Avatar and a ton of other nonsense, which killed everyone. Not that I would not have still won with the 9 planeswalkers in my bin.

Interestingly Kaya, Ghost Assassin did great work this game stripping hands with multiple minuses (and filling the bin for Command the Dreadhorde).


The second game was a super long slog against ranar, scarab god mill and that izzet guy who doubles cast triggers.

It went back and forth a bunch, with me controlling the board with Royal Assassin and Kor Haven, etc. The fundamental moment was when Scarab God misread one of his cards that makes everyone discard everything and put that many zombies out -- he thought he got all the zombies. Still, he did that right into Ranar the Ever-Watchful with a ton of spirits and Bident of Thassa which put him in serious pole position.

Luckily I topdecked Winds of Abandon and brought it back to reasonable, but he could just keep going off.

Thankfully Veyran, Voice of Duality just killed us with Aria of Flame and Sorcerer Class, which was a surprise finish in a game that was back and forth between me and Ranar the Ever-Watchful most of it.

I put 18 commander damage on Ranar, then he topdecked Eldrazi Displacer to slow me down, and then I winds'd him. Tons of back and forth

I did discover a bit of a nonbo with Sword of Truth and Justice which is that it prevents Breena from putting counters on herself. Not sure that's bad enough to cut it, but boy it's annoying. this is flat out wrong and I was wrong to get taken in by another player. Breena has a lot of text so I think it's a forgivable mistake :)

Winds was mixed this game, it surely got me back into it. Veyran was killing us with 9 mana or 7 mana because he had Mana Geyser for his combo turn, and Ranar was able to make use of the mana. But getting rid of everyone's entire boards plus Eldrazi Displacer was critical for me.

------------------------------------------

Overall the land ramp suite is playing great. This game I used Lotus Vale and Sevinne's Reclamation and Keeper of the Accord to out ramp the table the entire game (until I Winds of Abandon...which I then caught right back up pretty fast, except to Ranar.

Probably the most notable thing about this deck right now is that it can struggle sometimes with early lands, so I may need to add one or two smoothing cards. Stoic Farmer continues to impress interestingly, and Keeper of the Accord and the catchup land suite are functioning well.
Last edited by pokken 2 years ago, edited 1 time in total.

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pokken
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Post by pokken » 2 years ago

This deck is defunct, planeswalkers were just too crappy and slow. I've converted to a flying bomb midrange deck and it's going very well :)

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pokken
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Post by pokken » 2 years ago

I wanted to do a post mortem on this deck because it was such a promising concept that I had a lot of fun trying.

What kept happening as I played this is basically that the planeswalkers were either too expensive or not impactful. The ones that doubled as removal spells were 4-6 mana and I never wanted to spend 6 mana to remove something. There weren't really enough cheap walkers that generated board presence; a Nissa, Voice of Zendikar is what this deck wanted but couldn't play. One strong token producer at the lower end of the mana spectrum just wasn't enough (gideon ally) although he was consistently good.

The thing I kept finding is that I wanted to play creatures that ramped to synergize with breena and this chewed up slots. Walkers plus all the walker support plus the combat trick support was just doing too many things.

Cutting the walker support and walkers freed up about 20 slots for more removal and creatures that can help close the game.

Generally I think I might like to add a few walkers that don't need support because they do naturally synergize with breena.

But basically this deck failed to thrive because it needed to do too many things. I think a walker deck with breena might work better with A ramp
Strategy that doesn't require so many cards but playing non-synergistic mana rocks doesn't really appeal to me.

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