MTG Salvation

My group likes to do themed decks for things like guild fight and clanmander, where the commander has to have the chosen guild/clans watermark and you cannot use cards from another guild/clan (watermarks from other sets are fine and guild doesn't count with clan). So in light of that I have decided to run the lady of the hour Alesha, Who Smiles at Death in a Mardu deck. I'm mostly looking for opinions and suggestions about what I can do to give the deck some more power. Certain cards I can't get my hands on for various reasons, like the various swords or Reveillark. Also if you think any of the Raid cards I'm not using would be worth a spot then do tell, I loved the Raid mechanic and wish I could use it more.

With that in mind here's what I have so far:



The idea of the deck is that essentially, I own combat, through Gustcloak Savior and Knight-Captain of Eos I can basically control whether or not my creatures are truly involved in combat and the Knight-Captain even lets me do it on my opponents turns, then when the games been going for a long time I make use of my extra combat cards to overrun with a small army that I've been slowly buffing quietly behind a facade of pacifism.

You could also run Reconnaissance. Its dirt cheap and resilient. Also, you don't really have a ton of stuff for Alesha's effect. Duergar Hedge-Mage is an all star here, as is Fiend Hunter. Citadel Siege is, I think outclassed by Cathars' Crusade. Have you also considered a Sword of Feast and Famine? It allows for multiple attacks, and activations of Alesha's ability, and casting multiple spells as well. I replaced Diabolic Revelation with Demonic Collusion in my list. The buyback gives you targets for Alesha, and you get a card for 5, instead of for 6. Obsidian Battle-Axe is a slight improvement over Hero's Blade, as you get the free attach when you cast Alesha, and it provides haste. I am 75% done with my list. I'll post a link when I am done. I like your ideas though!

Oh god, how have I never thought of Torch Fiend?!I've been running Keening Spirit and the like, but I've been lamenting their inability to hit artifiacts. Definitely gonna put that in my list.

As TheStygian pointed out, you don't have a whole lot of targets for Alesha's ability, which I think is probably okay: Mardu goodstuff is reasonably solid on its own, and using Alesha more for her pretty efficient stats than her recursion is a viable strategy. If the deck isn't about constantly swinging with her, though, I'm unsure about Whispersilk Cloak, Hero's Blade, and maybe even the multiple combat stage stuff that can get nutty with Alesha, though Sun Titan and Mardu Strike Leader could make it worth it.

Is Duplicant one of those cards you can't get a hold of? It's solid on its, and Alesha can bring it back if it dies.

One thing I'm noticing is that you have a lot of cards that are tremendously strong with a token creation strategy, but not a whole lot of cards for creating tokens. Like, if you draw Assemble the Legion, you'll be fine, but with no way to tutor it, I'm concerned that stuff like Brutal Hordechief or even Mentor of the Meek will be anything but mediocre.

What are your Buried Alive choices? If you're not running Lark, an alright substitution is Karmic Guide, Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, and Zealous Conscripts, which won't be much help on that combat phase, but makes you scary on the subsequent ones. Plus, all of these cards are totally playable on their own.

I ******* love Grenzo, but it's hard enough to make Grenzo work when the deck is dedicated to making Grenzo work.

I've actually made a tonne of changes to the deck since this point, here's a link to the current list. http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/alesha-who-came-saw-and-conquered/

In regards to using Citadel Siege I don't use it's Khans effect, I almost exclusively use the Dragons effect to tap down the largest creature on my opponents field or things I can't block. Duplicant is one of those cards I have trouble getting a hold of as are the various swords. I prefer Hero's Blade for the extra power, haste isn't a necessity so being a 6 power first strike is enough for Alesha, Who Smiles at Death plus it auto equips to Grenzo, Dungeon Warden. Zealous Conscripts has 3 power so can't be revived by Alesha and I've only got one Kiki-Jiki and he's in my mono-red deck. I've also moved away from the extra combat cards, I'm still running Waves of Aggression because retrace is pretty good in the late game.

Probably my favourite card though is Master Warcraft because three of the people I play against run a Dragon tribal deck, a zombie token swarm deck and and Abzan counters and outlast-lords deck. Being able to just say "You attack him with everything, all your creatures block that one small creature. Defender dies." Is such a great feeling.

Being able to just say "You attack him with everything, all your creatures block that one small creature. Defender dies." Is such a great feeling.

Master Warcraft doesn't let you choose who those creatures attack, just which creatures will attack and how creatures will block. There's some lines in the rules that separates the choosing of attackers and choosing who those attackers attack. Master Warcraft just overrides the choosing the attackers. The active player still decides who they'll attack.

Damn. That makes it a lot less exciting.

Quote from TrippyGame »

Damn. That makes it a lot less exciting.

I agree. It's not in Alesha's colors, but Illusionist's Gambit is a fun bit of combat shenaniganery if you're looking for something like that in a different deck. I've actually used that in conjunction with Master Warcraft in my Ruhan deck to kind of get the effect you're looking for (albeit super expensive).

Nah, I think I'll just start using it to save someone, change it from "you kill them" to "No you don't attack this turn."

EDIT: After having a chance to play using Master Warcraft I decided to take it out, also took out Aurelia, the Warleader for Purphoros, God of the Forge