Noble Heritage (Brainstorming)

[DirkGently]

(personal recommendation, mythicspoiler to look up all the leaked card images. Go to "newest spoilers")

Probably a smidge preemptive, but out of all the leaks from CLB noble heritage is easily the one that makes me the most interested. Orzhov Advokist is one of my all-time favorite cards, so seeing it in the commander zone makes me a bit giddy (technically it's a bit difference since noble heritage doesn't protect planeswalkers, but it does protect you from targeted effects).

If you haven't played with the card, it plays much stronger than it looks at first glance. For a start, you get 2 counters every turn for no cost, so it's already a Citadel Siege. It also gives you a lot of extremely valuable information. Someone not taking counters doesn't mean they're just leaving open the possibility of attacking you, it means they absolutely plan on attacking you, otherwise they wouldn't be leaving 2 free +1/+1s lying around. So you know exactly who your enemies are. Meanwhile, they have to decide before knowing your intentions, so you can set up a next-turn-win or something very threatening in your main phase and be unassailable to attacks. Having all that political fun in the CZ...it's gonna be great. And I wanna talk about it.

Of course, there will presumably be many options for "partners" with the enchantment, but we've got a few options available already to look at. There's a few so far that catch my interest:

wilson, refined grizzly - kinda boring, but honestly a 2/2 with all those keywords could become a major threat pretty quickly when getting 2 counters every turn.

gale, waterdeep prodigy - just a strong card overall with good color options. Casting instants to flash in board wipes is very spicy. Casting sorceries to cast instants is less exciting especially if you're playing a bunch of counterspells but there's still some value to be had.

lulu, loyal hollyphant - useless, but it kinda looks like a relative of a phelddagrif, so there's that.

lae'zel, vlaakith's champion - strands you in mono-white, but it does have a pretty direct synergy.

sarevok, deathbringer - I kinda like this angle a bit. You can buff him up, and then passively incentivize your opponents to attack each other and/or take a bunch of noncombat life loss, thus passively whittling down the table from a safe distance. Sort of a political take on group slug.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

I say Wilson is the choice. You get a rock solid, consistent offense to direct towards obvious enemies, and solid defense against people unwilling to tango with the bear. Selesnya is also just a rad color identity imho, it plays much better than it looks. The idea of a princely bear named Wilson is equally rad.

[DirkGently]

Idk, while I agree that he makes a lot of sense, I don't think green adds much to white in terms of control. And I'm not sure the advokist ability will be as useful played in a more proactive aggressive deck. How are you envisioning green contributing to the deck?

I think Gale is probably my current pick despite having no direct synergy. Just seems like a house for control by getting double draw value and flash board wipes for 4mv.

Honestly Selesnya is one of my least favourite combinations and probably the one I find most boring lol. Though a noble bear is obviously awesome.

[Artemis132]

Looks like the blue options for an azorius color combination so far spoilered are:

Volo, Itinerant Scholar

Gale, Waterdeep Prodigy

Imoen, Mystic Trickster
Alora, Merry Thief
Vhal, Candlekeep Researcher
Renari. Merchant of Marvels

So not a lot of direct synergy in azorius... and I still think Gale would be the best one for a political control deck. Volo could also be strong but requires a list with more creatures.

If the number of "partners" per color and rarity will bei the same as in original commander legends we can probably expect 2 more UC Legends with Background

EDIT: I can't count, 6 UC in CML, not 4 ...

[Ruiner]

Karlach, Fury of Avernus is who I'd be looking at probably. Extra combat phases make those counters doubly good.

[DirkGently]

There were 8 mono-blue partners in CMR by my count, so in theory (assuming an even split between commanders and backgrounds) there would only be 4 options. Given that we've already got 6, I wouldn't be surprised if we're done. So far it seems like each color gets 4 uncommons, a rare, and a mythic, which is what we've got for blue.

Volo, Itinerant Scholar could conceivably be run as control, but creatures are usually not great control cards, especially not in a political sense. Obviously there are hatebears, but if the point is to be politically savvy that seems counterproductive. Good draw engine, though, so if you can wedge enough creatures in there I guess it could be good.

Gale, Waterdeep Prodigy is obviously really strong for control, although thinking about it a bit more, having a board wipe in the graveyard is kinda just asking to get aggroed. Nobody likes having a board wipe hanging over their head.

Imoen, Mystic Trickster...I really dislike commanders that want you to have initiative but don't actually give it to you (or anyone). You've gotta run a ton of cards that provide initiative just to guarantee your commander does something. It could be ok otherwise, although having initiative kinda incentivizes people to attack you so that's not great.

Alora, Merry Thief Putting counters on something just to bounce it to hand seems bad. Attacking seems hard to do while trying to convince people not to attack you back. I guess you could peck in with Mischievous Catgeist // Catlike Curiosity without bothering people much, but are you really getting good value from that? Meh.

Vhal, Candlekeep Researcher is probably competing with Gale for the top slot. She gives huge counter value without being combat focused (though she can be with vigilance). You need some good mana sinks for her, but that could easily get out of hand. Even a clunker like Gemstone Array could start generating tons of value...first turn you tap her, she gives you 7 mana...that's on turn 5 with no ramp btw, you're more than doubling your mana strictly using the command zone...

Renari. Merchant of Marvels provides a bit of value insofar as flashing in nev's disk or whatever could be cute, and he lets you keep up counter mana. Not a lot of dragons in UW but I guess it could still be okay. I'm not huge on artifact focus decks but I could see it working, obviously flash and control are a good combo even if artifacts aren't usually my go-to card type for a control deck.

As far as other colors, yes Karlach, Fury of Avernus gets a lot of value from the counters but I don't think he really benefits from the political value of noble heritage - if anything, the counters are likely to allow enemies to build up enough defense to get viable blocks. Plus RW is a much weaker combination for control.

[Artemis132]

The question concerning Vhal, Candlekeep Researcher is: does storing mana in rocks like Gemstone Array with her ability or use colorless sinks like Staff of Domination or Retrofitter Foundry (to name some good ones) is what we want to do in a low thread-level reactive political control deck? We would need to play a certain number of cards that make use of Vhals mana and are mediocre without her.... The stronger artifact-sinks might also draw hate or even scream infinite combo and make us more threatening / less able to do politics.

[DirkGently]

As with all things, I suppose it comes down to how powered your opponents decks are. Any creature you get to freeroll +2/+2 onto every turn is going to become somewhat threatening, especially a commander. Maybe alora is secretly the best one because you can use her as a 1-use doom cannon, and then she resets ands needs to get built up again. Sometimes a 1/3 of getting insta-killed is a risk you gotta accept when someone else is building a board state that's going to kill everyone.

Of course, you could always use Gale or Renari and just choose not to take any counters yourself.

[DirkGently]

I think I'm going to take a first crack at noble heritage using Sarevok, Deathbringer. In a higher-powered group I think he's pretty garbage since it's fairly easy to sacrifice something or make something die in combat (especially if you've got fetchlands) but I think it'll be interesting to force my playgroup to be a little more cognizant of what they're doing, especially when forgetting to find a way to kill something becomes really costly.

And I'll be brewing it as 98 lands.

[TheGildedGoose]

And I'll be brewing it as 98 lands.

Of course you will.

Shadowheart, Dark Justiciar is probably the best option, which is too bad, because as a character she sucks. I desperately wish they had pushed more of the classic Baldur's Gate video game characters more than they did the Baldur's Gate 3 characters, but I guess WotC stands to make more money by promoting a game that will theoretically come out before the sun burns out, so I get it. If Viconia, Drow Apostate, the superior cleric of Shar, had this ability instead of that annoying turd of a character I would be elated, but no.

[Artemis132]

Im still brewing with Noble Gale despite him having no direct synergy. But maybe we get some additional nice Legends with Background from the Commander decks ... among the leaked cards was at least one (mythic) background that isnt part of the normal set and would fit the theme of one of the Precons perfectly, so I expect that we get one pair of Background partners per deck.

This is my first version of Noble Heritage//Gale, Waterdeep Prodigy.

Decklist

DecklistCMCManaPricesChartsDraw 7

Commander (2)

1 Gale, Waterdeep Prodigy

1 Noble Heritage

Creatures (6)

1 Giver of Runes

1 Mausoleum Wanderer

1 Mother of Runes

1 Spurnmage Advocate

1 Sinister Concierge

1 Spellskite

Artifacts (3)

1 Immovable Rod

1 Sensei's Divining Top

1 Sol Ring

Enchantment (4)

1 Land Tax

1 Telepathy

1 Tenuous Truce

1 Duelist's Heritage

Instants (32)

1 An Offer You Can't Refuse

1 Chain of Vapor

1 Enlightened Tutor

1 March of Swirling Mist

1 Mystical Tutor

1 Path to Exile

1 Pongify

1 Rapid Hybridization

1 Stubborn Denial

1 Swan Song

1 Swords to Plowshares

1 Arcane Denial

1 Counterspell

1 Cyclonic Rift

1 Dovin's Veto

1 Heliod's Intervention

1 Into the Roil

1 Mana Drain

1 Muddle the Mixture

1 Resculpt

1 Tale's End

1 Unexpectedly Absent

1 Disallow

1 Fierce Guardianship

1 Flawless Maneuver

1 Force of Negation

1 Generous Gift

1 Oblation

1 Comeuppance

1 Cryptic Command

1 Force of Will

1 Mystic Confluence

Sorceries (18)

1 Fragmentize

1 Gitaxian Probe

1 Oust

1 Ponder

1 Portent

1 Preordain

1 Serum Visions

1 Void Snare

1 Declaration in Stone

1 See the Truth

1 Winds of Abandon

1 Council's Judgment

1 Solve the Equation

1 Supreme Verdict

1 Cleansing Nova

1 Tragic Arrogance

1 Hour of Revelation

1 Ondu Inversion // Ondu Skyruins

Land (34)

1 Adarkar Wastes

1 Arcane Lighthouse

1 Command Tower

1 Deserted Beach

1 Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire

1 Flooded Strand

1 Forbidden Orchard

1 Glacial Fortress

1 Hallowed Fountain

1 Irrigated Farmland

10 Island

1 Kor Haven

1 Maze of Ith

1 Mystic Gate

1 Mystic Sanctuary

1 Otawara, Soaring City

4 Plains

1 Port Town

1 Prismatic Vista

1 Scavenger Grounds

1 Sea of Clouds

1 Seachrome Coast

Approximate Total Cost:

Trying to make the best of Gales ability by playing cheap sorceries to "splice" onto instants, mostly 1 cmc cantrips that help you to not run out of gas while playing the control game. See the Truth seems especially good with Gale. Also cheap interaction like Void Snare or Oust that will double up in value and are even better when played at instant speed. Especially mass removal can be really devastating when used like that as DirkGently already mentioned. Recasting an instant tutor like Mystical Tutor "spliced" onto a cantrip also seems good.

Mother of Runes, Giver of Runes and Spellskite are added to protect our growing Gale and also give us additional deterrence together with Spurnmage Advocate, Sinister Concierge, Kor Haven and Maze of Ith. Also Duelist's Heritage seems perfect for the deck to make the most of the stats we give to our opponent's creatures as well as speeding up the clock to kill with Gale himself in the later stages of the game. In the early game I should probably avoid putting too many counters on Gale and instead show a bit of weakness to hide my strength.

The control package of the deck is heavily inspired by DirkGentlys Phelddagrif list, a deck I really like by the way.
Any suggestions or ideas? Any additional cards that have good synergy with one of the two commanders?