dereks clerics

I am constantly building Commander decks at home. Every preview season, if there is any newly unveiled legendary creature that I think is cool, I immediately start pulling piles and piles and cards from my collection to sit around until those new toys are officially released and I can assemble the decks I’ve envisioned for weeks. And then I play them all once and take them apart because something just doesn’t jibe the way that I expected. It is a vicious cycle. Rarely does anything stay together for more than a week or so, and the routine of collating, unsleeving and resleeving cards takes up very real time and headspace. It gets so easy to feel burnt out on the format, and also to buy into the idea that there isn’t a deck out there that’s just right for you. In a format built on self-expression, that can be a pretty alienating feeling!

To combat this, I’ve been focusing on taking a much more intentional approach to deck building. Rather than becoming easily distracted with all the new toys, I want to simmer down a little and really hone in on the sorts of things that really resonate with me and my journey with Commander as a format. Thinking back through my own history with the game itself, there are so many powerful memories and experiences that I can re-purpose into a new space and translate them to the way that I engage with the game as I play it now. Of all the decks that I’ve built over the years, the ones that end up sticking around are the ones that were born from doing just that. That being said, I wanted to walk through that process with a deck that I recently put together that really hits me in all the right feels.

So the genesis of this list was a combo that I’ve always had a soft spot for. Much like people that have “favorite books” that they like to “read,” about once a year or so I try to build a deck around this aforementioned combo. It is as follows: use Nomads en-Kor or one of his kin, target Task Force or an analog a bajillion times, then switch it’s power and toughness to Fling at an opponent. It’s always been a tough nut to crack since it only kills one person at a time and has a significant amount of moving pieces, but there’s something about it that just feels warm to me. The creatures it requires are mopey and weird, and it gets to utilize the card with probably my favorite art in the game, Dwarven Thaumaturgist. Win-win. The pieces and infrastructure required lends itself pretty easily to a Jeskai color identity — the creatures you need are white, fling effects live mostly in red, and the cards that switch power and toughness exist in both red and blue. Plus you have access to counterspells and good interaction and so on and so forth. So imagine my surprise when I had the itch to build around this combo again and it all just felt so…boring. I knew it was time to take things in a new direction that maybe didn’t build itself so easily.

So I immediately cut the red cards.

At that point I didn’t know where I would end up, but I knew that I wanted to see what would happen without access to the red cards. Things like Brion Stoutarm, Fling, About Face, etc., were out of consideration and I needed to adapt to a new direction. Luckily, blue still has ways to switch power and toughness. Twisted Image is still good, and Merfolk Thaumaturgist can certainly get the job done. I just needed to piece together a way to throw my creatures at my opponents and everything would be good to go. I initially looked at black as a third color to supplement the missing pieces. Not only would I gain access to Twisted Reflection as a little redundancy, but also Transmutation. In the Fling analog department, Essence Harvest looked like something that could pull off a decent impression of the real thing. That left me putting together an Esper list. The first thing that hit me like a sack of potatoes when I started thinking about black cards was the obvious connection to one of the all-stars of the decks that I had put together in the past: Daru Spiritualist. I’d never explored any kind of tribal support in my previous attempts to build a deck like this — it is self-enabling, as a cleric itself, and introduces a sideways tribal element to the mix. In this context, with Shaman en-Kor being a cleric as well, shifting the initial combo I had in mind into a tribal shell seemed like a no-brainer. black and white are the premier cleric tribal colors, after all. This is where things just started to click at a very rapid pace. Starlit Sanctum could be another ever-elusive non-red “Fling” piece. Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose, along with Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim or Disciple of Griselbrand could execute the same effect without needing to swap power and toughness at all.

This was truly exciting territory for me, dear reader. Grindy, high synergy, mid-range creature decks are my jam, especially in this case, where I got to utilize a lot of cleric tribal support cards that I haven’t played with since I was in high school. So here I was, adapting one of my favorite combos into one of my favorite archetypes. But then I saw a way to go deeper into the rabbit hole, and I couldn’t resist. In this particular circumstance, I had a lot of low mana value utility creatures, with powerful enablers that required me to tap those creatures. Master Apothecary, Ancestor’s Prophet and Field Surgeon are very powerful cards when you have the resources to use them, so I started by making room for Intruder Alarm. This is one of my biggest pet cards, and while I try to shoehorn it into a lot of different decks, it really fit like a glove here. But that wasn’t all. What goes better with Intruder Alarm than my other shameless pet card, Aluren? Sure, it’s symmetrical, but it’s also completely busted, and complements Intruder Alarm pretty perfectly if I’m already looking to utilize cards that require me to tap my creatures. And so I found myself in four colors. The green cards here are actually all pretty great. Cryptolith Rite plays really well in a creature-dense list, and Symbiotic Deployment is an underappreciated gem that has a really high ceiling in a deck where you’re already looking to take advantage of Intruder Alarm. Plus, we get access to some super cool green clerics, most importantly Vizier of the Menagerie and Brutalizer Exarch. Emmara, Soul of the Accord provides even more creature-tapping synergy, and was another easy include.

When the dust had settled, I had a suite of creatures and infrastructure that not only supported the initial combo I was trying to adapt, but also opened up tons of new synergies and lines of attack to explore, all working in concert with the cards that bring me the most joy to cast. After playing with the current list a few times, I couldn’t be happier. Obviously, with any mid-range creature deck there is always room to tinker, but it’s hitting all the major notes. I’ve gotten to do that awesome Intruder Alarm stuff. I’ve gotten to do super sweet things with Aluren. I’ve stymied many combat steps with Master Apothecary and been able to grind through sustained pressure with Orah, Skyclave Hierophant. And yes, I’ve certainly “flung” my fair share of clerics at other people, as the good Lord intended. There are so many different paths to get from point A to point B, and once I get going, the deck just sings to me. The current list, as I continue to iterate on it, can be found here.

Take the things you love, re-contextualize them, adapt them into something new and exciting, but also warm and comforting. There is not much in the format as exciting as finding new ways to approach the things you love to do, and falling down that rabbit hole to a place you never thought you’d end up. The unexplored potential for the things that seem the most familiar is still super broad, especially since so much of the larger conversation tends to center on optimization rather than more lateral considerations. Giving yourself that freedom and room to breath is just a great way to re-center what’s important in how you want your deck to look and feel in the long term.