When I originally created it, I didn't realize how often games would end up with me being archenemy, but I'm okay with being the bad guy sometimes. Besides, my favorite deck is Dirk Gently's Pheldagrif, which is like, the opposite of archenemy so whatever. I should mention that the deck doesn't usually start as the main threat, but the longer the game goes, the more apparent it becomes that I'm in the driver's seat and need to be stopped. The whole flickering and flash themes means that it can frequently respond to opponents answers, I think the high level of interactivity is what makes me love it so much.
- Tribal decks are lame and unicorns are a poorly supported tribe, it does seem like Blessed Sanctuary was tailor made for this commander, but it doesn't actually make the cut, more on why that is later. So unicorn tribal is a no-go.
- There's many commanders that seem more suited for a +1/+1 counter deck, most of them are in Selesnya to, so their doesn't seem to be much point in building around counters, if the ocassional synergy pops up, that's great, but for the most part, it seems best to ignore the second ability all together (though you could argue it's critical for the deck since it allows me to run green, which is over half the deck's cards, lol.
- So it seems the first ability is clearly the one we are building around.
But think about it: Emiel's ability always costs to activate, but not all ETB effects were created equal, I'd much rather have Hornet Queen's etb effect than Ferocious Pup.
Obviously, we have to get the creature on the battlefield in the first place, but once we do, flickering Hornet Queen doesn't cost anymore than flickering Ferocious Pup.
Now we have to still have a mana curve but I think the fact that we want to flicker big stuff as fast as possible should offer a hint as to what kinds of ETBs should be at what mana value (mana value still sounds strange lol). Namely: Cheap creatures should provide interaction and value, while expensive creatures should develop our board state.
Examples of cards commonly found in other Emiel decks that I've discarded:
- Ferocious Pup, for it's MV is actually a pretty strong token generating ETB, but early in the game we'd much rather get a Wall of Blossoms or a Farhaven Elf so we can work towards playing a better, but harder to cast token generator (eg. Hornet Queen).
- Regal Force has the opposite problem: If I have that much mana, I'd much rather start going for the win, sure Regal Force will draw more cards than Wall of Blossoms, but the wall can start generating value very early and late game can still draw multiple cards per turn, even if not at the same great rate as Regal Force
- Terastodon, again, why blow everything up when you could just go and win the game. Terastodon costs the same as Craterhoof Behemoth for pete's sake.
There are, however, a couple more concepts that guided my thought process:
- There are some cards that are not flicker effects, nor are they ETB effects, but they make these flickering engines better, I like to call these catalysts, examples of catalysts are Blessed Sanctuary, Panharmonicon, and Soul Warden. For the most part, I think these cards ought to be avoided. If you don't have an engine set up, these cards are useless, If you do have an engine set up, then you find yourself, in a predicament: you can cast the catalyst so your next flicker effect is better, or you could use that mana to just flicker the engine again. This means the first time you use the engine with a catalyst, you are really only breaking even. For example, if I cast Panharmonicon then activate Emiel the Blessed to flicker Wall of Blossoms, then I'll have spent and lost a card in order to draw 2 cards, if I had just flickered Wall of Blossoms twice, I would have spent in order to draw 2 cards, without having to commit another card in my hand to the field. Yes, as time goes on, Panharmonicon can pay for itself and then accrue massive advantage, but if anyone interacts with your stuff then you'll, essentially, be getting 2 for 1ed. This doesn't mean that you should strictly avoid all catalysts, but they inherently come with a lot of downsides, so I'd only run particularly strong catalysts. For example: Seedborn Muse is still worth running, while Panharmonicon can double the value you're getting from your engine, card Seedborn Muse can quadruple it in a 4 player game AND even f you had to tap out for it, it only needs to survive until the next player's upkeep in order to get some use out of it AND it's a creature that can be tutored for AND it's a creature that can be protected by Emiel the Blessed. I'm sure you guys all already know that Seedborn Muse is good, but hopefully this paragraph explains why it's so much better than the other options out there and why it's currently the only one I'd say is worth running.
- This deck can be pretty oppressive (While I'd typically rather try to win, sometimes I find myself flickering Palace Jailer multiple times a turn for multiple turns until I find some sort of wincon, I'll also shamelessly flicker Selfless Squire each player's turn for multiple rounds until I've drawn enough lands to be able to do other things while keeping the Selfless Squire lock down). So this may seem I bit hypocritical, but I've still chosen to avoid infinite combos, a couple iterations have run some, simply because 2 ETB flicker effects make comboing very easy, almost accidentally easy, but I'd rather not.
- This deck is a late game deck, Their are very few decks out there that can assemble more powerful value engines or more powerful token generators, so the longer we can stay in the game, the better off we are. this means we need to be able to interact with a wide variety of threats and unfortunately, we don't have access to blue, this means we need to run flexible answers, and we need to have tutors to find these options. We also aren't running black so most of our interaction ought to be in the form of creatures so we can actually tutor for them. I suspect the current list runs too many tutors, but whatever the correct number of tutors is, it's going to be a pretty high number. So those of you that have a stroke every time you see a tutor in your precious EDH format ought to move on: I'm pretty sure seeing this list would kill you.