Time to brew another Sunforger list!

[Dunadain]

Sunforger is a lot of fun, and I've brewed 4 different decks around that card, but the main problem with all of them is that you have to somehow FIND Sunforger in the first place, meaning you have to fill your deck with a hundred tutors, or put a lot of restrictions on your deck with a card like Plargg, Dean of Chaos // Augusta, Dean of Order.

However, Kellan, the Fae-Blooded just got spoiled! No more hoops, just an honest-to-goodness Open the Armory in the command zone.

There's a lot of ways to build Sunforger lists, but I want to go the token route, since the actual body on Kellan, the Fae-Blooded also doubles as an anthem effect.

There's really not a lot else to say about the Sunforger package, a bunch of interaction, a bit of looting/card draw, and maybe one or two token spells. All with Mistveil Plains to reuse them.

I also want to run things like Brass Squire and Puresteel Paladin, but I'm going to try to avoid going overboard. I'd rather save my Sunforger activations for interaction, and just use the cards in my hands to develop. Therefore, instant speed re-equips will be at a premium, the sorcery speed ones are options, but not critical.

I've also been doing a bit of scryfall surfing to see if there's any cool cards to take better advantage of Kellan, the Fae-Blooded's anthem effect. There's not too many options, but, hilariously, I actually think Toggo, Goblin Weaponsmith will be insane in this deck, each landfall turns into an anthem.

Other options I found for getting multiple equipment out of one card are:

1. Bloodforged Battle-Axe, which might be good, you even get two triggers when Kellan, the Fae-Blooded connects, since he has double strike, but Kellan, the Fae-Blooded has no evasion.

2. Arterial Alchemy it only gives you three equipment, and you still have to equip them. I think it would be a great card if the deck was already making a bunch of blood tokens, but there's no reliable way to find this card, so building around it isn't ideal.

Of course, the other way to abuse Kellan, the Fae-Blooded's anthem is to just play a lot of cheap equipment. I'm convinced playing cards like Shuko is a bad idea, but I think equipment like Andúril, Flame of the West will be sweet.

The other thing I'm considering is whether or not to build around Price of Progress. On the one hand, I think a little late-game reach would be awesome. On the other hand, I like playing with utility lands, and there's no guarantee my opponents won't be playing all/mostly basics.

[darrenhabib]

I like the idea of Sword of Light and Shadow so that you return Kellan, the Fae-Blooded from graveyard if killed. You can keep recasting as Birthright Boon. Kellan goes to adventure exile, but you can recast both of them.

Any of the "Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage" equipment are good when combined with Double Strike and evasion of some sort.

As a big Sunforger player myself, as you will know you need a setup first before you go heading into doing Sunforger things. It require 5 mana each turn and even then the first time you cast it you want some sort of protection as people will destroy it on sight. So then it can be a 8 mana play if you want to cast then equip and have the 2 mana for activation.
Of course your Brass Squire and Puresteel Paladin or whatever else you have in your deck can mitigate this, but what I'm eluding to is that your first Birthright Boon probably isn't going to be Sunforger.
To get the mana for the setup, you are probably going to want to get Sword of the Animist, Sword of Hearth and Home, Bitterthorn, Nissa's Animus.
A very likely routine will be Turn 2 cast Birthright Boon getting Sword of the Animist, Turn 3 cast Kellan, the Fae-Blooded, Turn 4 cast and equip Sword of the Animist.

If you wanted to go the Price of Progress route then there are plenty of ways to gain life. Radiant Scrollwielder and Firesong and Sunspeaker are fun ways to do this.

[Dunadain]

@darrenhabib How are you planning on recasting Birthright Boon?

Or are you expecting your opponents to kill him for you?

Sounds like you're thinking of brewing a very different deck tbh.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Leonin shikari is a must run here. Run Greaves with it and make spot removal a nightmare. Speaking of which, because you have a tutor in the CZ, I say you go full toolbox strategy. Imagine it: Imperial Recruiter into Stoneforge Mystic into Sword of Hearth and Home! And that's just one scenario! The beautiful tutor chains, all with a dynamic sunforger suite to keep it humming, it could be glorious! A dash of hatebears, a good suite of tutors, 6-8 equipment, and then like 25 sunforger targets and some lands, blammo!

EDIT: You could also play enough swords to give you complete coverage. Kellan lets you find whichever you need most (the inverse of your PoP debate, so to speak).

[darrenhabib]

@darrenhabib How are you planning on recasting Birthright Boon?

Or are you expecting your opponents to kill him for you?

Sounds like you're thinking of brewing a very different deck tbh.

I hadn't planned on brewing a deck yet. But yes I would foresee casting Birthright Boon at least twice in a game.
The way that I look at it is if you equip Kellan, the Fae-Blooded say with Sword of the Animist then you are attacking for 6 Commander damage. If opponents don't get rid of him, great. I'd be more than happy to keep dealing damage or forcing chump blocks and land ramping each turn.
So yeah I expect opponents having to kill him eventually and by that stage I'm then actually ready for Sunforger.

[Dunadain]

@darrenhabib How are you planning on recasting Birthright Boon?

Or are you expecting your opponents to kill him for you?

Sounds like you're thinking of brewing a very different deck tbh.

I hadn't planned on brewing a deck yet. But yes I would foresee casting Birthright Boon at least twice in a game.
The way that I look at it is if you equip Kellan, the Fae-Blooded say with Sword of the Animist then you are attacking for 6 Commander damage. If opponents don't get rid of him, great. I'd be more than happy to keep dealing damage or forcing chump blocks and land ramping each turn.
So yeah I expect opponents having to kill him eventually and by that stage I'm then actually ready for Sunforger.

hmmm... you may have convinced me...

[PrimevalCommander]

I hadn't planned on brewing a deck yet. But yes I would foresee casting Birthright Boon at least twice in a game.
The way that I look at it is if you equip Kellan, the Fae-Blooded say with Sword of the Animist then you are attacking for 6 Commander damage. If opponents don't get rid of him, great. I'd be more than happy to keep dealing damage or forcing chump blocks and land ramping each turn.
So yeah I expect opponents having to kill him eventually and by that stage I'm then actually ready for Sunforger.

To block Kellen with Sword of Animist equipped, one would only need a 3/4 creature or bigger kill it. When you start attacking turn 4 with Animist, I suspect by turn 5 each opponent will dump a blocker in play. So I wouldn't expect a 3/3 doublestrike commander to run the table for more than 1-2 turns. You will need more support to punch through. Now add just a single Sword of Triggers and Value and the removal will come out post haste. But that requires more cards, and equipment in hand. I say this because I play a couple commanders that want to be in combat with modest power/toughness and I'm amazed how quickly I can get bogged down by a 4/4 beast or a few 2/2 Zombies. Really annoying.

[Dunadain]

Ideally, I'd like to equip sword of hearth and home, or sword of forge and frontier. However, they require a total of five mana to cast and equip. While sword of the animist hits that sweet four.

Of course, tutoring straight for Sunforger, and then hoping to make it around the table once isn't all that terrible of a plan either. Especially if you have some recursion.

[Dunadain]

To be honest, the more I think about it, the more I think I want sunforger to be a small package in the deck, rather than the main focus of the deck. I realize I kind of started with Kellen because he's the only Commander that can consistently get you sunforger with no restrictions, but I'm actually finding building around the creature side of Kellen more interesting haha.

[darrenhabib]

To block Kellen with Sword of Animist equipped, one would only need a 3/4 creature or bigger kill it. When you start attacking turn 4 with Animist, I suspect by turn 5 each opponent will dump a blocker in play. So I wouldn't expect a 3/3 doublestrike commander to run the table for more than 1-2 turns. You will need more support to punch through. Now add just a single Sword of Triggers and Value and the removal will come out post haste. But that requires more cards, and equipment in hand. I say this because I play a couple commanders that want to be in combat with modest power/toughness and I'm amazed how quickly I can get bogged down by a 4/4 beast or a few 2/2 Zombies. Really annoying.

We play in very different circles. I play among hundred of Magic Online players. I wouldn't ever expect all three other players to have exactly a 3/4 blocker or bigger each by Turn 4. That would be very weird and statistically improbably among that set of players.

[pokken]

We play in very different circles. I play among hundred of Magic Online players. I wouldn't ever expect all three other players to have exactly a 3/4 blocker or bigger each by Turn 4. That would be very weird and statistically improbably among that set of players.

I can't recall a game on MTGO where at least one player wasn't mana screwed and doing nothing :D

[PrimevalCommander]

Yeah, I can regularly get Kalamax, the Stormsire into play on turn 3 and it astounds me how fast the board can gum up even when I can pump it to 5/5 and 6/6 pretty quickly. But in my primary play group, we pride ourselves on promoting chip damage and build our early game to account for this fact. So if you don't pose an early game board state, you stand to eat a lot of early damage unless no one is playing an aggro deck, which is rare. Some players haven't caught on, but they usually become the punching bags for the aggro decks to get attack triggers and damage triggers until they learn to start blocking. I only play in paper, and only with a very small play group. So my experiences are very localized. I only get to play once a quarter at that.

I personally couldn't expect a 3/3 doublestrike commander to get more than 2-3 swings before attacking becomes unprofitable. Unless you just want it to die so you can recast the tutor. That still gets you 18 commander damage or some chump blocks, probably all at the same player who is playing a creature-light build, or just got a slow start. Of course that doesn't include more equipment to boost it's power, which is likely. Bumping up to 4 power makes if much more likely to survive until is gets scary enough to draw removal, or just wins the game.

I did get completely creamed by an equipment deck, but the sequence was Turn 2 Sram, Senior Edificer turn 3 Sword of Feast and Famine turn 4 equip and start swinging and casting more equipment. Me or the other guy didn't have removal and couldn't slow down the sword triggers.

[DirkGently]

Out of curiosity, how do you see your decklist breaking down numbers-wise for equipment, lands, interaction, token making, etc?