I am working on a list for Hanna, Ship's Navigator and have some good input from this thread here. I want to migrate to her own deck list thread so we can discuss the many possible routes to take this wonderful Weatherlight navigator. She is a character that is much beloved by me, and her mechanic caters to a very simple deck in respect of "How does the commander contribute to the game plan." This allows for a huge amount of flexibility in how she is built but keep in mind that utilizing her recursion to get back key cards will be a boon. She is one of those commanders that casually enters the board, mostly unnoticed, and does her thing, then she can sit or leave the board and not hinder any progress at all. Remember, she is a Maker, not a Destroyer!
I see many mid-range decks in my meta and a few control decks, although mostly I am the control player. My meta consists of many competitive decks that utilize stax elements, combos, all in aggro, as well as some commanders that cater to combos very well such as The Gitrog Monster, Animar, Soul of Elements, and Meren of Clan Nel Toth. Token decks have also popped up over my meta a lot recently such as Trostani, Selesnya's Voice, Omnath, Locus of Rage, and Titania, Protector of Argoth for example. Many of the decks I play against can utilize the downsides of stax to some extent, however building Hanna as an essence of what stax is should pulll us ahead of the competition. She is a tool that will pull back our stax pieces when they get removed, as well as pull back what we sac or lose to them as well. What makes her so great is we do not have to rush to play her. She can sit idly back in the command zone until we absolutely need her to grab something for us. And she is not a must answer type of commander as much as others that contribute to their combos. With some creativity, she can be as competitive as many other commanders. So let's delve into what makes Hanna so good.
Hanna Herself
Let's take a look at this lovely lady and find out what makes her tick.
First, her converted mana cost is 1WU. This makes her very aggressively costed to be able to play her early if needed for blocking purposes (not really our intentions for her) or she can be cast mid to late game for very little of our mana so we can still cast other spells to affect the board. This also makes it easier to recast her if she dies to board wipes or spot removal. She will be a target if we have some goodies in our graveyard, so watch out for this.
Next, let's look at her type: Human Artificer. Ok not a bad typing if you want to take her a human tribal route, and we all know that blue and white have a lot of support for this. Definitely something to keep in mind for deckbuilding purposes.
Third, her activation: 1WU This is where she gets good. It seems like a lot to pull back an artifact OR enchantment. Wait either or?! That's fantastic! And it is reusable. There are not many ways to keep getting value each turn like that. So this is where she directs the deck and pulls back all the pieces we use throughout the game.
Lastly, her power and toughness: 1/2. YIKES!! That's definitely not why we use her and she won't be wanting to attack or defend very often! But, it is something we can work with. Everything else about her are all pluses. Cost is efficient, type is a common type, ability is repeatable value. We have the makings of something great! Now lets get to building what she can do!
Short Stax and Eggs
So here we are going to look at a fun and interesting approach to the Master Chef! Hanna cooks up some interesting mixtures of what a stax deck looks like as well as the delicious idea of "Eggs" to get us to our finishing combo. The resource denial mixed with drawing our deck serves a pretty good tag team to keep opponents away from our game plan. So what exactly does Stax and Eggs look like? Here is a breakdown of what each contribute to Hanna's Kitchen.
"Eggs"
Eggs is a combo that has been around since Mirrodin when we received Second Sunrise and it started to abuse this little gem and the others of the same variety: Skycloud Egg. We generate enough value out of these type of cards, drawing until we reach our win condition which can be one of many different ways, which I will touch base on in a moment. What is difficult in commander is to duplicate a strategy that used multiple copies of these eggs and Second Sunrise to keep bringing them back. We have to look at all the possible "Egg" cards in order to get the same amount of value. The big finish leads up to infinite mana of some kind and paired with Goblin Cannon or Origin Spellbomb + Salvaging Station to repeat the process. Spellbomb we will need to hold counter magic up to protect it until the next combat phase, but it can be regenerated again if something arises a turn later if the board is wiped. These pieces are never truly gone with Hanna at the helm to bring them back out. With the right set of cards and a commander ready to restore lost pieces, we can keep our opponents on their toes! So let's look at this lineup!
You're probably thinking, how in the heck do we assemble so many pieces to combo off? Not all are as unrealistic as you might think. These combos are here for the same reason I bring you "Eggs." These egg cards draw an absurd amount of our deck. Drawing into these cards or a variation of them is a lot easier than it looks. Plus, don't forget we have blue. Every artifact tutor out there is at our disposal, and we can find all the best.
Stax
Here is the Short Stax, the portion that pulls so much weight to keep us where we need to be. These cards will make sure our opponents are locked down to making maybe one play a turn and not able to attack effectively. Stax generates the feel bads in the most ways possible. It is resource denial. It hits the entire board making everything much harder to play disrupting the curve of everyone's decks. We are built to hurt less than the rest of the players due to our mana sources that we get into play early on. What we want to accomplish with stax is a game state that is sluggish, and makes all the big plays commander is known for useless due to lack of mana to play appropriately. Stax focuses on making all players sac permanents, tap down permanents, prevent untapping of permanents, taxing spells, and negating effects altogether. With the compilation of stax choices For Hanna, and the draw source of the "Eggs," it makes our board look to be in Christmas Land, except it's actually obtainable and in reach of our goals. Let's look at the Stax choices that set up our road to victory.
Stax can be harsh. I definitely only recommend it if your play group has tough skin. Because, it is likely that you will not have many friends after the game is over. Here is a great resource to learn all you need to know on Stax; The Stax Primer.
Can You Get on the Weatherlight with Hanna?
You will enjoy Hanna if:
You like to play dirty with graveyard abuse.
Pitching your hand to draw more cards is no problem at all.
Having few creatures to do your dirty work.
You enjoy artifacts and enchantments to be in your creature zone!
Making sure to effectively Time Walk players by them sacrificing, tapping, and skipping untaps and permanents.
You will not enjoy Hanna if:
You want to control the most creatures.
Attacking into the red zone!
Enter the Battlefield must be on every card!
Your graveyard and hand should remain separate.
Your commander doesn't win you games on their own.
What is Her Competition?
Azorius Commander Spotlight:
Brago, King Eternal: Brago has become a feared Azorius commander for the fact that he can manipulate enter the battlefield to a very high degree, and not only on creatures. This is a potent tool, and if using a commander for high amounts of control and comboing out with many cards that can go infinite quickly upon the enter the battlefield triggers, he is definitely the way to go. He is a commander focused game plan however. Keep this in mind when choosing how you want to your deck to play.
Ephara, God of the Polis: She has crept up the ladder to helm a very powerful flickering style deck. Or a flash matters theme. Of course the difference here is you want creatures in the deck to get value off of her. This is very different from how Hanna is built. If you like creature utility, she is one of the best for this.
Grand Arbiter Augustin IV: The notorious Grand Arbiter! We all know him for his taxing ability and he is by far the most common stax pick with his cost reduction ability to you, and taxation to the opponent. He has stax written on his card! If you want a dedicated stax commander he is probably your guy, although there are many commanders that lend to this strategy very well.
Rasputin Dreamweaver: One of the second most popular commanders. He is highly recommended for a flicker style deck much like Ephara is. He really gets going mid to late game with many synergies tying him altogether. If you like the flicker style, again he would be a better option for this type of setup as Hanna is in for the control game.
Draw Suite: Mystic Remora, Standstill, Rhystic Study, Thirst for Knowledge, Fact or Fiction, Recurring Insight, and Time Spiral. Each of these draw spells are powerful in their own regard, and we gain so much value off of each of them. Mystic Remora and Rhystic Study potentially draw us cards after each spell our opponent plays, usually 2-3 per turn. The latter draws us a burst of cards at a time from 3-7 cards. Standstill is the only card that we need to play around, but it does one of two things. Draws us 3 cards and can be recurred via Hanna to do so again, or prevent our opponents from playing spells for a turn, possibly more. Having each of these in the list makes for a very powerful draw suite that will draw us into the stax pieces we need to turn the game in our favor. Rhystic Study specifically has given so much value to the games I've played that I believe this list cannot be without it. I always had a full grip of cards, giving me the right answers to my opponents and threats of my own to lock the game completely. If anything, make room for this in any Hanna list.
Combos and Tutors:
So, how does Hanna win her games? She wants to assemble ways to lock the board, or combo out in some fashion. The ones I have included, and in time will be elaborated more on, all leave the board in a question of "Do you want to continue?" Usually this means it will be in my favor, but, this may not always be the case.
Combo 1: Karn, Silver Golem + Mycosynth Lattice: this destroys all of our opponent's lands and locks the board in our favor as we will be the only one with lands each turn.
Combo 2: Omniscience + Armageddon/Catastrophe: Similar to the first combo except that we will be the only player casting spells while everyone has to build resources to get back into the game.
Combo 3: Tezzeret the Seeker + Mycosynth Lattice: after a +1 form Tezzeret, all our artifacts become 5/5 beaters. This makes our whole board 5/5's to take out the other players. Best suited after a board wipe or land wipe.
How do we assemble these combos? Our tutors do a fine job. Enlightened Tutor grabs all of our artifact based combos or Omniscience even. Mystical Tutor can grab Armageddon and Catastrophe quickly. Fabricate is a straight to hand tutor for Karn or Mycosynth Lattice. Trinket Mage and Tezzeret the Seeker will grab many mana sources or other key cards such as Pithing Needle and Tormod's Crypt. And last, Academy Rector. She will almost always go for Omniscience. But once we have that, most of our plays are pure gold with mass wipe available to us.
Mana Sources
Mana sources are what make a stax deck possible, where we take a very small hit from our own debilitating effects. Stax is meant to make games grind to a hault, but we need a way to continue playing our threats so that we do more than just stop the fun at the table and can actually win the game. Our mana rocks of choice are:
0 cmc Everflowing Chalice, Chrome Mox, Mox Opal, (Mana Crypt- If you own one use it)- these have relatively no cost to them to be able to land them on the board. Most of these should be considered because they take no resources, aside from Everflowing Chalice, to cast.
1 cmc Mana Vault, Sol Ring - Fast mana is good mana. These generate more than they cost, making them ideal picks.
2 cmc Azorius Signet, Grim Monolith, Mind Stone, Talisman of Progress- all of these fall into the realm of offering more mana than cost (Grim Monolith) or color fixing purposes while only costing 2 to cast. Mind Stone is a repeatable draw source with Hanna if need arises.
3+ cmc Commander's Sphere and Thran Dynamo- Commander's Sphere is a great choice as it offers color and a continuous draw source with Hanna. Thran Dynamo generates so much mana that it helps to a large degree. 3 pays most of our spells costs.
With some careful planning, we can set the board up as early as turn three or four to make it very hard to stop our oppressiveness. Make sure that your mana sources are well planned out by cost and what they provide as far as "fast mana" and on curve mana. The balance must be there for the deck to flow into each play with the most effectiveness.
Change Log
7/19/2016
- Wayfarer's Bauble
- Dust Bowl
+ Expedition Map
+ Blinkmoth Well
7/25/2016
- Claws of Gix
- Mind Stone
- Commander's Sphere
- Vedalken Orrery
- Mystic Remora
- Standstill
- Leyline of Anticipation
- Omniscience
- Forbid
- Wrath of God
- Recurring Insight
- Academy Rector
- Elspeth, Sun's Champion
If you want to stay with the heavy enchantment theme, I personally would consider cutting:
- Starfield of Nyx: Dunno how your experience with this is, but I found it rather bad in Hanna. It seems like a natural fit, but I really found it to be awkward (expensive, slow and you need to play around getting five enchantments at a random time, because you could simply lose all your board to a Wrath of God. Happened to me :/).
- Sphere of Safety: Propaganda and Ghostly Prison are "fine" if you need them (My experience is mixed. I think i.e. Humility does even more and should be played), but 5 mana is so much..
- Oblivion Ring: This one is "ok" (because you can permanently exile with a sacrifice outlet), but overall, Grasp of Fate is simply way better and should almost always be played over Oblivion Ring.
- Copy Enchantment: Experiences might again differ, but I found myself sitting on this card for longer than I would have liked (since you will most of the times draw the random "hate", because you stop a lot of decks from doing what they want to do )
- Hesitation: "Meh". Imo easily played around, but not 100 % sure.
- Arcane Denial: I think this is not the type of deck I would like to play this spell. Most of the times, people tend to counter with this counterspell only if they win the turn after, because giving someone else that many resources can be bad. Also a reason I am not 100 % confinced by Standstill. Wouldn´t Swan Song (cheap) be "strictly" better? Or are creatures really the thing you want to counter with it? If yes, then consider playing Forbid, since the discard can also be an upside with Hanna / Open the Vaults / Replenish.
- Spell Crumple / Hinder: They simply aren´t that good after the tuck rule change. I get it, you play Tunnel Vision and it combos with it. Tbh, killing one enemy for 6 mana and leaving everybody else up is imo not worth the combo (also kinda unreliable). A simple Negate / Misdirection should probably be better.
- Barrin, Master Wizard: Do I miss something? Why Barrin? Why not Zoidberg or Rayne, Academy Chancellor (jk, I simply like her ^^)? Doesn´t seem to be on theme in your deck and imo should be switched (besides for his nostalgic factor). I guess there should be easier to find / recur sacrifice outlets.
- Lands: Imo your land count is slightly too high. 35 - 36 should be fine if we get the overall cmc down. I would also consider to play slightly more ramp.
- Aura Thief: I wrote enough about him
If you don´t want to stay with the enchantment theme, I would mostly cut all those:
Thats it for the start. Hope something of what I wrote will be helpful!
Thanks for the great feedback!
All of your points are very valid ones. There is probably too much inefficiency in this list overall. I plan to do a huge shift in how this functions and will probably cut out much of the enchantments to try a more lock out strategy with her. She may be more effective than my last attempts at it. Many of the cuts you suggest will be the first to go and I will update the OP with the new list and possibly work this thread into an updated resource at some point to mmapson125 old primer. It does need some updating and playstyle changes and I believe Hanna deserves a resource like this.
All of your points are very valid ones. There is probably too much inefficiency in this list overall. I plan to do a huge shift in how this functions and will probably cut out much of the enchantments to try a more lock out strategy with her. She may be more effective than my last attempts at it. Many of the cuts you suggest will be the first to go and I will update the OP with the new list and possibly work this thread into an updated resource at some point to mmapson125 old primer. It does need some updating and playstyle changes and I believe Hanna deserves a resource like this.
Really glad you found my points useful!
The Lock Out strategy seems like a way better approach than Pillow Fort. Dunno, simply too many decks don´t care about Propaganda / Ghostly Prison type of effects, so they might not have any impact at all. Solitary Confinement could be a possible substitution since it works well with Hanna and u / w overall. Atleast my experience with it was rather good.
I will gladly continue to stop by and watch how the deck evolves. The whole talking about her really made me consider building my own deck (just for xmage), just to get some actual play testing with her. At the moment most of my thoughts of her are based on my old list and I would love to see / play an actual "tuned" list. I would really welcome a new primer for her and if you want to step into mmapson125´s shoes some day, than I think this would be a good thing for every aspiring Hanna, Ship's Navigator player. She deserves some love.
Glad to inspire you to look at your Hanna list again. I did this very same thing with Mayael the Anima. She needed an updated primer and I am very happy with how mine turned out to help her be a fun splashy commander. I will do a work up and continue to look for ways to utilize all of her strengths. Thanks for the continued support to help get her on the right track. Check out the updated post as it progresses and let me know what you think of the changes.
I just wanted to reply to say I made quite a few changes today in her list and have taken her away from the heavy enchantment route. I have crafted her into a stax control list and I plan to get some testing in tomorrow or over the weekend with the changes I made. Any comments on others playing her similarly of your successes can help to define her a bit more and get her to a decently competitive final product. I think with some collaboration, she will be very well tuned and will be one of my favorites of the commanders I currently run. Thanks for any support along the way.
On a rather unrelated note: Did any of you Hanna players ever considered going the Blasting Station and friends route? I was considering building one deck with hanna and the stations but I can't seem to fit all the pieces together
On a rather unrelated note: Did any of you Hanna players ever considered going the Blasting Station and friends route? I was considering building one deck with hanna and the stations but I can't seem to fit all the pieces together
Sadly no experience with this route in Hanna, but I am pretty sure this would be way better in a decklist that also supports creatures / tokens. Some examples off the top of my head would be Teysa, Orzhov Scion or Glissa, the Traitor.
Glad to inspire you to look at your Hanna list again. I did this very same thing with Mayael the Anima. She needed an updated primer and I am very happy with how mine turned out to help her be a fun splashy commander. I will do a work up and continue to look for ways to utilize all of her strengths. Thanks for the continued support to help get her on the right track. Check out the updated post as it progresses and let me know what you think of the changes.
Your primer looks pretty damn awesome. I plan on getting my own guide to primer status one day, but that will need some time and more work
I see you are heavily working on this guide and also changed a bunch of cards. I would atleast try / playtest Static Orb and Trinisphere at one time. A T1-T2 Trinisphere can really be backbreaking against lots of opponents and has several upsides against strategys that don´t want to play fair (i.e. Narset won´t have fun with Trinisphere around).
Imo you should add Blinkmoth Well (I personally would cut Dust Bowl for it since you don´t want to effectively use four mana only to destroy a single land every turn). It really helps you play around your own Winter Orb / Static Orb / Trinisphere / etc. effect and even if you don´t have those, tapping opponents rocks and utility cards is often times worth a single land!
You are quite right on Trinisphere and Static Orb. I have in mind to add Trinisphere once I pick up a copy and find which commander has my Static Orb. I had not seen Blinkmoth Well before and it will definitely be added in. I was iffy on the Wayfarer's Bauble and it was kind of a last minute thought. Expedition Map grabs all the utility lands I need so it will get the green light over the Bauble. And I will find room for the Crucible for sure. I didn't have time to track down all the cards I wanted to add in so I grabbed the ones I knew for sure where going to be used. Thanks for reminding me on it.
I will continue to improve the write up when time permits, hopefully getting most of the info in over this weekend. I hope to test her out some tomorrow and will add my experience with her as well.
I am thinking of testing out an idea that I feel if I make a few more spaces for it it can potentially be a win condition that I know many stax decks have utilized in the past. I plan to test out a Salvaging Station Package since I already have 10 artifacts that or 1 cmc or less. I imagine making a few extra spots for some of the more common Salvaging Station cards will help the combo out, plus Hanna can always pull back the station if it gets destroyed. Has anyone had much luck with this idea?
P.S. If you are interested in Eggs overall, then I found THIS to be really informative. I just finished building my Stax / Eggs Glissa, the Traitor deck, but haven´t played it by now Completely different colors, but I also plan to use Salvaging Station with this build. Still, maybe you can get some ideas (le deck).
I have not yet got all the pieces I need for the engine, but I plan on getting them together soon and seeing how it works. I think the eggs ideas would work very well with Hanna since she has access to Second Sunrise and Faith's Reward. I will swap out a few pieces like Claws of Gix for Krark-Clan Ironworks. I'll add it to the OP with card options and get some testing in to see how well it plays out, but I think it could get her to a good combo finish.
Edit: I have added a section for the stax and "Eggs" breakdown. My decklist does not reflect the changes yet that I made, it is currently a work in progress.
I see many mid-range decks in my meta and a few control decks, although mostly I am the control player. My meta consists of many competitive decks that utilize stax elements, combos, all in aggro, as well as some commanders that cater to combos very well such as The Gitrog Monster, Animar, Soul of Elements, and Meren of Clan Nel Toth. Token decks have also popped up over my meta a lot recently such as Trostani, Selesnya's Voice, Omnath, Locus of Rage, and Titania, Protector of Argoth for example. Many of the decks I play against can utilize the downsides of stax to some extent, however building Hanna as an essence of what stax is should pulll us ahead of the competition. She is a tool that will pull back our stax pieces when they get removed, as well as pull back what we sac or lose to them as well. What makes her so great is we do not have to rush to play her. She can sit idly back in the command zone until we absolutely need her to grab something for us. And she is not a must answer type of commander as much as others that contribute to their combos. With some creativity, she can be as competitive as many other commanders. So let's delve into what makes Hanna so good.
First, her converted mana cost is 1WU. This makes her very aggressively costed to be able to play her early if needed for blocking purposes (not really our intentions for her) or she can be cast mid to late game for very little of our mana so we can still cast other spells to affect the board. This also makes it easier to recast her if she dies to board wipes or spot removal. She will be a target if we have some goodies in our graveyard, so watch out for this.
Next, let's look at her type: Human Artificer. Ok not a bad typing if you want to take her a human tribal route, and we all know that blue and white have a lot of support for this. Definitely something to keep in mind for deckbuilding purposes.
Third, her activation: 1WU This is where she gets good. It seems like a lot to pull back an artifact OR enchantment. Wait either or?! That's fantastic! And it is reusable. There are not many ways to keep getting value each turn like that. So this is where she directs the deck and pulls back all the pieces we use throughout the game.
Lastly, her power and toughness: 1/2. YIKES!! That's definitely not why we use her and she won't be wanting to attack or defend very often! But, it is something we can work with. Everything else about her are all pluses. Cost is efficient, type is a common type, ability is repeatable value. We have the makings of something great! Now lets get to building what she can do!
So here we are going to look at a fun and interesting approach to the Master Chef! Hanna cooks up some interesting mixtures of what a stax deck looks like as well as the delicious idea of "Eggs" to get us to our finishing combo. The resource denial mixed with drawing our deck serves a pretty good tag team to keep opponents away from our game plan. So what exactly does Stax and Eggs look like? Here is a breakdown of what each contribute to Hanna's Kitchen.
"Eggs"
Eggs is a combo that has been around since Mirrodin when we received Second Sunrise and it started to abuse this little gem and the others of the same variety: Skycloud Egg. We generate enough value out of these type of cards, drawing until we reach our win condition which can be one of many different ways, which I will touch base on in a moment. What is difficult in commander is to duplicate a strategy that used multiple copies of these eggs and Second Sunrise to keep bringing them back. We have to look at all the possible "Egg" cards in order to get the same amount of value. The big finish leads up to infinite mana of some kind and paired with Goblin Cannon or Origin Spellbomb + Salvaging Station to repeat the process. Spellbomb we will need to hold counter magic up to protect it until the next combat phase, but it can be regenerated again if something arises a turn later if the board is wiped. These pieces are never truly gone with Hanna at the helm to bring them back out. With the right set of cards and a commander ready to restore lost pieces, we can keep our opponents on their toes! So let's look at this lineup!
"Eggs"
Cards that enable "Eggs"
The Combos with "Eggs"
Krark-Clan Ironworks + Salvaging Station + Voltaic Key = Infinite Mana + Goblin Cannon = Infinite Damage
Rings of Brighthearth + Basalt Monolith = Infinite Mana
Codex Shredder + Voltaic Key + Rings of Brighthearth + Infinite Mana = Infinite Mill
Salvaging Station + Infinite Mana + Rings of Brighthearth + Voltaic Key + Origin Spellbomb = Infinite Tokens
You're probably thinking, how in the heck do we assemble so many pieces to combo off? Not all are as unrealistic as you might think. These combos are here for the same reason I bring you "Eggs." These egg cards draw an absurd amount of our deck. Drawing into these cards or a variation of them is a lot easier than it looks. Plus, don't forget we have blue. Every artifact tutor out there is at our disposal, and we can find all the best.
Stax
Here is the Short Stax, the portion that pulls so much weight to keep us where we need to be. These cards will make sure our opponents are locked down to making maybe one play a turn and not able to attack effectively. Stax generates the feel bads in the most ways possible. It is resource denial. It hits the entire board making everything much harder to play disrupting the curve of everyone's decks. We are built to hurt less than the rest of the players due to our mana sources that we get into play early on. What we want to accomplish with stax is a game state that is sluggish, and makes all the big plays commander is known for useless due to lack of mana to play appropriately. Stax focuses on making all players sac permanents, tap down permanents, prevent untapping of permanents, taxing spells, and negating effects altogether. With the compilation of stax choices For Hanna, and the draw source of the "Eggs," it makes our board look to be in Christmas Land, except it's actually obtainable and in reach of our goals. Let's look at the Stax choices that set up our road to victory.
Stax
Stax can be harsh. I definitely only recommend it if your play group has tough skin. Because, it is likely that you will not have many friends after the game is over. Here is a great resource to learn all you need to know on Stax; The Stax Primer.
You will not enjoy Hanna if:
Brago, King Eternal: Brago has become a feared Azorius commander for the fact that he can manipulate enter the battlefield to a very high degree, and not only on creatures. This is a potent tool, and if using a commander for high amounts of control and comboing out with many cards that can go infinite quickly upon the enter the battlefield triggers, he is definitely the way to go. He is a commander focused game plan however. Keep this in mind when choosing how you want to your deck to play.
Ephara, God of the Polis: She has crept up the ladder to helm a very powerful flickering style deck. Or a flash matters theme. Of course the difference here is you want creatures in the deck to get value off of her. This is very different from how Hanna is built. If you like creature utility, she is one of the best for this.
Grand Arbiter Augustin IV: The notorious Grand Arbiter! We all know him for his taxing ability and he is by far the most common stax pick with his cost reduction ability to you, and taxation to the opponent. He has stax written on his card! If you want a dedicated stax commander he is probably your guy, although there are many commanders that lend to this strategy very well.
Rasputin Dreamweaver: One of the second most popular commanders. He is highly recommended for a flicker style deck much like Ephara is. He really gets going mid to late game with many synergies tying him altogether. If you like the flicker style, again he would be a better option for this type of setup as Hanna is in for the control game.
3 Hanna, Ship's Navigator
Artifacts - 32
0 Chrome Mox
0 Everflowing Chalice
0 Mox Opal
0 Tormod's Crypt
1 Æther Spellbomb
1 Chromatic Sphere
1 Chromatic Star
1 Codex Shredder
1 Conjurer's Bauble
1 Expedition Map
1 Mana Vault
1 Origin Spellbomb
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Skycloud Egg
1 Sol Ring
2 Azorius Signet
2 Elsewhere Flask
2 Grim Monolith
2 Ichor Wellspring
2 Scroll Rack
2 Talisman of Progress
2 Torpor Orb
2 Winter Orb
3 Basalt Monolith
3 Rings of Brighthearth
3 Sculpting Steel
3 Tangle Wire
4 Krark-Clan Ironworks
4 Smokestack
4 Thran Dynamo
6 Mycosynth Lattice
6 Salvaging Station
1 Land Tax
2 Copy Artifact
2 Luminarch Ascension
3 Aura of Silence
3 Rhystic Study
4 Humility
Instants - 14
0 Pact of Negation
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Path to Exile
1 Swords to Plowshares
2 Arcane Denial
2 Counterspell
2 Cyclonic Rift
2 Muddle the Mixture
3 Second Sunrise
3 Thirst For Knowledge
4 Fact or Fiction
4 Faith's Reward
5 Force of Will
Sorceries - 6
3 Fabricate
4 Armageddon
4 Supreme Verdict
6 Austere Command
6 Catastrophe
6 Time Spiral
Creatures - 4
3 Trinket Mage
4 Clever Impersonator
5 Karn, Silver Golem
6 Sun Titan
5 Tezzeret the Seeker
Land- 36
1 Academy Ruins
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Arid Mesa
1 Blinkmoth Well
1 Buried Ruin
1 Command Tower
1 Flooded Strand
1 Glacial Fortress
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 High Market
8 Island
1 Marsh Flats
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Mystic Gate
1 Nimbus Maze
7 Plains
1 Polluted Delta
1 Prairie Stream
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Strip Mine
1 Tectonic Edge
1 Windswept Heath
Mystic Remora, Standstill, Rhystic Study, Thirst for Knowledge, Fact or Fiction, Recurring Insight, and Time Spiral. Each of these draw spells are powerful in their own regard, and we gain so much value off of each of them. Mystic Remora and Rhystic Study potentially draw us cards after each spell our opponent plays, usually 2-3 per turn. The latter draws us a burst of cards at a time from 3-7 cards. Standstill is the only card that we need to play around, but it does one of two things. Draws us 3 cards and can be recurred via Hanna to do so again, or prevent our opponents from playing spells for a turn, possibly more. Having each of these in the list makes for a very powerful draw suite that will draw us into the stax pieces we need to turn the game in our favor. Rhystic Study specifically has given so much value to the games I've played that I believe this list cannot be without it. I always had a full grip of cards, giving me the right answers to my opponents and threats of my own to lock the game completely. If anything, make room for this in any Hanna list.
Combos and Tutors:
So, how does Hanna win her games? She wants to assemble ways to lock the board, or combo out in some fashion. The ones I have included, and in time will be elaborated more on, all leave the board in a question of "Do you want to continue?" Usually this means it will be in my favor, but, this may not always be the case.
Combo 1: Karn, Silver Golem + Mycosynth Lattice: this destroys all of our opponent's lands and locks the board in our favor as we will be the only one with lands each turn.
Combo 2: Omniscience + Armageddon/Catastrophe: Similar to the first combo except that we will be the only player casting spells while everyone has to build resources to get back into the game.
Combo 3: Tezzeret the Seeker + Mycosynth Lattice: after a +1 form Tezzeret, all our artifacts become 5/5 beaters. This makes our whole board 5/5's to take out the other players. Best suited after a board wipe or land wipe.
How do we assemble these combos? Our tutors do a fine job. Enlightened Tutor grabs all of our artifact based combos or Omniscience even. Mystical Tutor can grab Armageddon and Catastrophe quickly. Fabricate is a straight to hand tutor for Karn or Mycosynth Lattice. Trinket Mage and Tezzeret the Seeker will grab many mana sources or other key cards such as Pithing Needle and Tormod's Crypt. And last, Academy Rector. She will almost always go for Omniscience. But once we have that, most of our plays are pure gold with mass wipe available to us.
Mana Sources
Mana sources are what make a stax deck possible, where we take a very small hit from our own debilitating effects. Stax is meant to make games grind to a hault, but we need a way to continue playing our threats so that we do more than just stop the fun at the table and can actually win the game. Our mana rocks of choice are:
0 cmc
Everflowing Chalice, Chrome Mox, Mox Opal, (Mana Crypt- If you own one use it)- these have relatively no cost to them to be able to land them on the board. Most of these should be considered because they take no resources, aside from Everflowing Chalice, to cast.
1 cmc
Mana Vault, Sol Ring - Fast mana is good mana. These generate more than they cost, making them ideal picks.
2 cmc
Azorius Signet, Grim Monolith, Mind Stone, Talisman of Progress- all of these fall into the realm of offering more mana than cost (Grim Monolith) or color fixing purposes while only costing 2 to cast. Mind Stone is a repeatable draw source with Hanna if need arises.
3+ cmc
Commander's Sphere and Thran Dynamo- Commander's Sphere is a great choice as it offers color and a continuous draw source with Hanna. Thran Dynamo generates so much mana that it helps to a large degree. 3 pays most of our spells costs.
With some careful planning, we can set the board up as early as turn three or four to make it very hard to stop our oppressiveness. Make sure that your mana sources are well planned out by cost and what they provide as far as "fast mana" and on curve mana. The balance must be there for the deck to flow into each play with the most effectiveness.
7/19/2016
- Wayfarer's Bauble
- Dust Bowl
+ Expedition Map
+ Blinkmoth Well
7/25/2016
- Claws of Gix
- Mind Stone
- Commander's Sphere
- Vedalken Orrery
- Mystic Remora
- Standstill
- Leyline of Anticipation
- Omniscience
- Forbid
- Wrath of God
- Recurring Insight
- Academy Rector
- Elspeth, Sun's Champion
WBR Alesha's Death Brigade WBR
WWW Brigid the Battlefield Saboteur WWW
UB Wydwen, the Biting Gale UB
Thanks for the great feedback!
All of your points are very valid ones. There is probably too much inefficiency in this list overall. I plan to do a huge shift in how this functions and will probably cut out much of the enchantments to try a more lock out strategy with her. She may be more effective than my last attempts at it. Many of the cuts you suggest will be the first to go and I will update the OP with the new list and possibly work this thread into an updated resource at some point to mmapson125 old primer. It does need some updating and playstyle changes and I believe Hanna deserves a resource like this.
WBR Alesha's Death Brigade WBR
WWW Brigid the Battlefield Saboteur WWW
UB Wydwen, the Biting Gale UB
Glad to inspire you to look at your Hanna list again. I did this very same thing with Mayael the Anima. She needed an updated primer and I am very happy with how mine turned out to help her be a fun splashy commander. I will do a work up and continue to look for ways to utilize all of her strengths. Thanks for the continued support to help get her on the right track. Check out the updated post as it progresses and let me know what you think of the changes.
WBR Alesha's Death Brigade WBR
WWW Brigid the Battlefield Saboteur WWW
UB Wydwen, the Biting Gale UB
WBR Alesha's Death Brigade WBR
WWW Brigid the Battlefield Saboteur WWW
UB Wydwen, the Biting Gale UB
Marath, Will of the Wild
Friendly Kess Twin Combo
Tatyova - Sir Bounce A Lot
Gonti's Luxury Pie
Prime (Eldrazi) Speaker Zegana (Retired)
You are quite right on Trinisphere and Static Orb. I have in mind to add Trinisphere once I pick up a copy and find which commander has my Static Orb. I had not seen Blinkmoth Well before and it will definitely be added in. I was iffy on the Wayfarer's Bauble and it was kind of a last minute thought. Expedition Map grabs all the utility lands I need so it will get the green light over the Bauble. And I will find room for the Crucible for sure. I didn't have time to track down all the cards I wanted to add in so I grabbed the ones I knew for sure where going to be used. Thanks for reminding me on it.
I will continue to improve the write up when time permits, hopefully getting most of the info in over this weekend. I hope to test her out some tomorrow and will add my experience with her as well.
WBR Alesha's Death Brigade WBR
WWW Brigid the Battlefield Saboteur WWW
UB Wydwen, the Biting Gale UB
The package I am currently looking at is:
WBR Alesha's Death Brigade WBR
WWW Brigid the Battlefield Saboteur WWW
UB Wydwen, the Biting Gale UB
I have not yet got all the pieces I need for the engine, but I plan on getting them together soon and seeing how it works. I think the eggs ideas would work very well with Hanna since she has access to Second Sunrise and Faith's Reward. I will swap out a few pieces like Claws of Gix for Krark-Clan Ironworks. I'll add it to the OP with card options and get some testing in to see how well it plays out, but I think it could get her to a good combo finish.
Edit: I have added a section for the stax and "Eggs" breakdown. My decklist does not reflect the changes yet that I made, it is currently a work in progress.
WBR Alesha's Death Brigade WBR
WWW Brigid the Battlefield Saboteur WWW
UB Wydwen, the Biting Gale UB