When a buddy gifted me the Cloud Strife Magic: The Gathering card, I used to be fairly intimidated. It’s a reprint of the wickedly highly effective Najeela, the Blade-Blossom — the sort of commander that opposing gamers goal instantly. A 3/2 human warrior that prices two colorless and one purple mana, Najeela generates a warrior creature token each time a warrior assaults, however the important thing element is its second means. For 5 mana (one in every of every colour) you’ll be able to untap all attacking creatures and provides them trample, lifelink, and haste and offers you an extra fight part after that one. Due to the power, which means a commander deck with Cloud Strife/Najeela at its head has entry to all 5 colours and a really clear path to victory.
All informed, the overall technique is fairly simple: ramp up a wide range of mana, fill your board with warriors, hold attacking to generate extra warriors, and ultimately set off the power mid-combat. Operating a five-color deck, nonetheless, means you need to rigorously calculate the mana prices throughout all your playing cards and stability your lands and different mana-generators accordingly. There are additionally numerous instructions you’ll be able to probably veer. Warrior seems as a creature subtype throughout all kinds of units. Whereas it’s doable to construct this out utilizing simply Closing Fantasy playing cards, I had essentially the most enjoyable mining the newest units and by embracing the weirdness of Universes Past — particularly once I added Raphael and Leonardo from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles into the combination.
Raph & Leo, Sibling Rivals is likely one of the many team-up playing cards from the TMNT set, combining two characters into one legendary creature. Regardless that the cardboard is a mutant ninja turtle and never a warrior, its means works very well right here. Each time Raph & Leo assault, they untap one or two attackers and set off an extra fight part if that is the primary fight part of the flip. In apply, you’ll be able to assault with this duo and one other large creature to hopefully draw out and remove some blockers. And in case your different attacker is a warrior, with Cloud Strife on the board, he’ll generate a warrior token. Raph & Leo then set off an extra fight part. That’s once you go all out: assault with all the things and pay for Cloud’s means to untap your attackers, buff them, and set off yet one more assault part.
There are much better additional fight playing cards on the market that I don’t personal but (like Moraug, Fury of Akoum), however the picture of Cloud teaming up a pair of Ninja Turtles is simply too good to go up. Within the TMNT packs I ripped, I additionally occurred to tug a Sword of Fireside and House reprint that includes a superb pizza cutter stuffed with cheese. It’s an gear that permits you to blink a creature and search your library for a primary land each time the outfitted creature offers fight injury to a participant. I’d additionally beforehand harvested a Sword of the Animist from the Closing Fantasy 7-themed Restrict Break preconstructed deck which additionally seeks out primary lands. Each of those assist repair your mana. So as to add to the FF7–TMNT crossover vibes, I additionally included The whole lot Pizza for the flavour. It additionally seeks out a land and comes with a seven-cost five-color means that’s tremendous highly effective. Since we’ll have that mana base anyway, it synergizes very well.
I additionally pulled a couple of helpful playing cards out of the Turtle Energy! TMNT precon which is five-color, specifically Exploding Barrel, Chromatic Lantern, and numerous non-basic lands.
Skimming by means of my Avatar: The Final Airbender playing cards, I noticed that lots of the ally creatures double as warriors. So combating alongside Cloud, Raph, and Leo we have now two variations of Sokka and Katara every, together with Suki, Kyoshi Warrior. Suki might be my favourite right here since her energy is the same as the variety of creatures you management (and we’ll wind up with a lot of warrior creature tokens). She additionally creates an ally creature token each time she assaults. Katara, Heroic Healer places a +1/+1 counter on one another creature you management when she enters, making her an ideal candidate for the Sword of Fireside and House blink impact to set off it once more.
The actual spine for this deck, nonetheless, comes from Lorwyn Eclipsed. The set places an enormous emphasis on typal methods, however it’s largely restricted to creatures that stay in Lorwyn and Shadowmoor like elves, goblins, and kithkin. However there are many changeling playing cards that depend as all creature sorts — together with warrior. Extra importantly, the set has Gathering Stone and Chronicle of Victory. In reality, regardless of sitting on the Cloud Strife card for some time, it was pulling Chronicle of Victory that lastly satisfied me to begin constructing this deck. As soon as performed for six mana, it buffs all creatures of a selected kind with +2/+2, first strike, and trample. And everytime you play a card of the chosen kind, you draw a card. All of these 1/1 warrior tokens immediately change into 3/3s with first strike and trample.
Lorwyn Eclipsed additionally delivered with Mirrormind Crown, an gear that attaches to a creature. Everytime you would create a number of tokens, you could as a substitute create tokens which might be copies of the outfitted creature. This one’s a bit dangerous since this deck is heavy on legendary creatures, however I do have Curious Colossus, a non-legendary large warrior that transforms all of an opponent’s creatures into 1/1 cowards. One other typal spotlight is Bloodline Bidding, an eight-cost black sorcery with convoke (creatures can faucet that can assist you pay the price), it returns all creature playing cards of the chosen kind in your graveyard to the battlefield.
I’ve nonetheless received some work to do earlier than issues really feel good for this deck, which I’ve named Warriors of Strife, and I nonetheless should tweak the mana base so it’s extra balanced. I really feel like this can be a commander deck I’ll continually be tinkering with, prefer it’s a revolving door of warrior heroes from every new set that comes out. For now, it’s in an amazing spot. Right here’s a have a look at the deck on Moxfield, the place it’s a relentless work in progress. In case you have any suggestions for cuts, changes, or singles I can buy, be at liberty to let me know within the feedback.
